A brain network model for depression: negative affective processing and cognitive control

Negative cognitive bias toward emotional stimuli is a main cognitive factor for depression, and also is a stable trait of depression. Previous studies showed enhanced negative affective processing and insufficient cognitive control can account for pathogenesis of depression, in terms of cognition. With the development of related researches, the mechanism of different negative cognitive biases（attention bias, processing bias and memory bias）in affective processing and the sub-component functions of cognitive control（updating, inhibiting and shifting）in depression were further studied. Especially in combination with the trend analysis of“neural network hierarchy”in the current cognitive neural field, we put forward a theoretical hypothesis of“dual-path hierarchical network model”for depression. That is, depression is caused by 3-level brain network of“heat”-“intermediate regulation”-“cold”, which forms a“closed-loop neural circuit”through the paths of bottom-up affective processing and top-down cognitive control, with the 3 brain networks interacting together and finally mediating to depression.