SEEKING and depression in stroke patients: An exploratory study

Abstract

The concept of SEEKING describes a predisposition to search enthusiastically for rewards in the environment. While SEEKING and its underlying functional anatomy have been extensively investigated in animals, such processes in humans, especially brain-damaged individuals, remain understudied. We therefore conducted an exploratory behavioral study in stroke patients to investigate the effects of brain lesions that anatomically could be interpreted to impact the SEEKING system and predicted relationships to depression. Patients with lesions in anterior, medial, and/or subcortical lesions showed significantly lower SEEKING scores and higher depression scores than nonlesioned subjects in the control group. Based on our data and related work on animals, we propose central involvement of the anterior subcortical–cortical midline system as core of the limbic system in SEEKING in humans.

Keywords:

• SEEKING
• Depression
• Stroke
• Affective neuroscience
• Rehabilitation

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the patients who took part in this study and to the three anonymous referees whose suggestions and helpful comments allowed us to improve the paper. We are grateful to D. Albarello for statistical computations, N. Marasti, P. Buttazzo, and the “Villa Bellombra” Rehabilitation Hospital (Bologna, Italy) for supporting our research and the Clinical Psychology Service. Many thanks to A. Bordini, E. Lucchi, and M. Turriciano for their contribution to data collection and organization. The study was financially supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Hope for Depression Research Foundation to Georg Northoff and Jaak Panksepp.