2022 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report

A social defeat model to identify neural markers of human depression vulnerability

Research Project

Project/Area Number	20K07723
Research Institution	Hiroshima University
Principal Investigator	RODRIGUES ALAN・DE・SOUZA 広島大学, 脳・こころ・感性科学研究センター, 特任助教 (90865031)
Project Period (FY)	2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
Keywords	social personality / trust / depression / social cognition / brain structure / disease prediction
Outline of Annual Research Achievements	Due to the COVID pandemic and restrictions to conduct experiments with human participants we were unable to conduct the proposed experiments. However, analyses of databases identified four social personality traits that significantly predict depressive and social anxiety symptoms: trust attitude (published as Fermin et al, 2022, Scientific Reports), social mindfulness (unpublished), self-esteem (unpublished) and social responsiveness (unpublished). Finally, we published on theoretical paper (Fermin, Friston & Yamawaki, 2022, Royal Society Open Science) to propose how visceral and physiological information represented in the brain insular cortex interacts other brain regions involved in social cognition to contribute to mental health.