Authors
Nora Czekalla, Alexander Schröder, Annalina V Mayer, Janine Stierand, David S Stolz, Tobias Kube, Christoph W Korn, Ines Wilhelm, Jan Philipp Klein, Frieder M Paulus, Sören Krach, Laura Müller-Pinzler
Published in
Translational psychiatry. Volume 16. Issue 1. Aug 06, 2026. Epub Aug 06, 2026.
Abstract
Maladaptive self-beliefs are a core symptom of major depressive disorder. These beliefs are perpetuated by a negatively biased integration of self-related feedback. Understanding the neurocomputational mechanisms of biased belief updating may help to counteract maladaptive beliefs and the maintenance of depression.
The present study uses a belief-updating task and functional neuroimaging to examine the neurocomputational mechanisms associated with self-related feedback processing in individuals with major depression (n = 35) and matched healthy controls (n = 32). We hypothesized that increased symptom burden in depression is associated with negatively biased self-belief updating and altered hemodynamic responses to social feedback.
Our findings show that, in the clinical sample, the incorporation of unexpected positive feedback was reduced with greater symptom burden, and that insula reactivity was generally elevated to unexpected negative feedback.
The interplay of increased hemodynamic responsiveness to negative feedback and the reduced learning from positive feedback provide new insights into cognitive distortions in depression and may explain the persistence of maladaptive self-beliefs and, thus, the maintenance of depression.
PMID:
42562807
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Aug 2026.
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