Spatiotemporal connectivity maps abnormal communication pathways in major depressive disorder underlying gamma oscillations

Auditory steady-state response underlying gamma oscillations (gamma-ASSR) have been explored in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), while ignoring the spatiotemporal dynamic characteristics. This study aims to construct dynamic directed brain networks to explore the disruption of spatiotemporal dynamics underlying gamma-ASSR in MDD. This study recruited 29 MDD patients and 30 healthy controls for a 40 Hz auditory steady-state evoked experiment. The propagation of gamma-ASSR was divided into early, middle, and late time interval. Partial directed coherence was applied to construct dynamic directed brain networks based on graph theory. The results showed that MDD patients had lower global efficiency and out-strength in temporal, parietal, and occipital regions over three time intervals. Additionally, distinct disrupted connectivity patterns occurred in different time intervals with abnormalities in the early and middle gamma-ASSR in left parietal regions cascading forward to produce dysfunction of frontal brain regions necessary to support gamma oscillations. Furthermore, the early and middle local efficiency of frontal regions were negatively correlated with symptom severity. These findings highlight patterns of hypofunction in the generation and maintenance of gamma-band oscillations across parietal-to-frontal regions in MDD patients, which provides novel insights into the neuropathological mechanism underlying gamma oscillations associated with aberrant brain network dynamics of MDD.