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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neurol.
Sec. Applied Neuroimaging
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1542346
This article is part of the Research Topic Advanced fNIRS Applications in Neuroscience and Neurological Disorders View all 11 articles

Reduced frontotemporal connectivity during a verbal fluency task in patients with anxiety, sleep, and major depressive disorders

Provisionally accepted
Fanxi Ding Fanxi Ding 1Yiyang Ying Yiyang Ying 2*Yuqing Jin Yuqing Jin 3*Xuanru Guo Xuanru Guo 3,4You Xu You Xu 1Zhenghe Yu Zhenghe Yu 1*Haiteng Jiang Haiteng Jiang 1,4,5,6*
  • 1 Affiliated Mental Health Center & Hangzhou Seventh People's Hospital, School of Brain Science and Brain Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
  • 2 The First School of Clinical Medicine, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China
  • 3 Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
  • 4 Liangzhu Laboratory, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
  • 5 MOE Frontier Science Center for Brain Science and Brain-machine Integration, State Key Lab of Brain-Machine Intelligence, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
  • 6 NHC and CAMS Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: It has been well established that psychiatric disorders are often accompanied by cognitive dysfunction. Previous studies have investigated the verbal fluency task (VFT) for detecting executive function impairment in different psychiatric disorders, but the sensitivity and stability of this task in detecting executive function in different psychiatric disorders have not been explored. Furthermore, clarifying the mechanisms underlying variations in executive function impairments across different psychiatric disorders will enhance our comprehension of the interconnections and distinctions among these disorders. Therefore, this study combined the VFT and the functional nearinfrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the impairment of executive function across psychiatric disorders including anxiety disorder (AD), sleep disorder (SD) and major depressive disorder (MDD). Methods: Two hundred and eight participants were enrolled including 52 AD, 52 SD, 52 MDD and 52 healthy controls (HCs). All participants completed the VFT while being monitored using fNIRS to measure changes in brain oxygenated hemoglobin (Oxy-Hb). Results: Our results demonstrated that MDD, AD and SD exhibited decreased overall connectivity strength, as well as reduced connected networks involving the frontal and temporal regions during the VFT comparing to HC. Furthermore, the MDD group showed a reduction in connected networks, specifically in the left superior temporal gyrus and precentral gyrus, compared to the AD group.Conclusions: Our study offers neural evidence that the VFT combined with fNIRS could sensitively detect executive function impairment in different psychiatric disorders.

    Keywords: fNIRS, Executive Function, verbal fluency task, functional connectivity, networkbased statistic

    Received: 09 Dec 2024; Accepted: 13 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Ding, Ying, Jin, Guo, Xu, Yu and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Yiyang Ying, The First School of Clinical Medicine, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China
    Yuqing Jin, Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
    Zhenghe Yu, Affiliated Mental Health Center & Hangzhou Seventh People's Hospital, School of Brain Science and Brain Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
    Haiteng Jiang, Affiliated Mental Health Center & Hangzhou Seventh People's Hospital, School of Brain Science and Brain Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.