Background: rumination is both a symptom and predictor of major depressive disorder (MDD). In MDD patients, rumination is correlated with depression severity, and for healthy people rumination is a...Show moreBackground: rumination is both a symptom and predictor of major depressive disorder (MDD). In MDD patients, rumination is correlated with depression severity, and for healthy people rumination is a predictor of the onset and duration of a depressive episode. Recently, rumination was shown to be correlated to functional connectivity in the default mode network (DMN) in the brain. During working memory (WM) tasks, the central executive network (CEN) shows high connectivity and the DMN shows low connectivity, whereas during rest this is the other way around. This ‘switching’ between DMN and CEN connectivity is blunted in MDD patients, but it is still unknown whether this ‘switch’ is affected by acute rumination in healthy participants. The aim of the current study is to determine the effect of acute rumination on the switching between the DMN and the CEN in healthy participants. Methods: 36 healthy females, randomly assigned to the acute-rumination group (n=18) or the no-rumination group (n=18) underwent fMRI assessment during a rest-WM task (alternating rest and WM conditions). Only for the acute-rumination group, an acute rumination phase immediately preceded the rest-WM task. Pearson’s correlation was performed to analyze the correlation between the DMN and the CEN in each participant. A mixed ANOVA was performed to analyze the effects of acute rumination. Results: Negative Pearson correlation coefficients were found between DMN and CEN for both groups. A statistically significant interaction effect was found for network (CEN versus DMN) × condition (rest versus WM). However, no statistically significant main effect was found for group (acute-rumination versus no-rumination). Conclusion: Consistent with previous studies an interaction in the expected direction was found between the DMN and CEN. However, this study does not support the effect of acute rumination on this interaction. The current study contributes to an increased understanding of the effect of rumination, and contributes to research of this prominent symptom of MDD and other psychological disorders.Show less
