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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatry. Dec 19, 2025; 15(12): 111513
Published online Dec 19, 2025. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i12.111513
Published online Dec 19, 2025. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i12.111513
Neural correlates of attentional switching dysfunction in major depressive disorder: Evidence from an event-related potential study with a dual-task paradigm
Ya-Wen Wu, Xin-Yu Wang, Yi-Fan Sun, Xue-Zheng Gao, Xiao-Hong Liu, Zhen-He Zhou, Department of Psychiatry, The Affiliated Mental Health Center of Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214151, Jiangsu Province, China
Luo-An Wu, Wei Li, Yu Li, Department of Psychiatry, The Yixing Fifth People’s Hospital, Yixing 214200, Jiangsu Province, China
Hong-Liang Zhou, Department of Psychology, The Affiliated Hospital of Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214151, Jiangsu Province, China
Co-first authors: Ya-Wen Wu and Xin-Yu Wang.
Co-corresponding authors: Zhen-He Zhou and Hong-Liang Zhou.
Author contributions: Zhou ZH and Zhou HL designed the study and contributed equally as co-corresponding authors; Wu YW, Wang XY, Sun YF, Wu LA, Li W, Li Y, Gao XZ, and Liu XH recruited participants and collected the data; Wu YW and Wang XY contributed equally as co-first authors; Wu YW, Wang XY, Zhou ZH and Zhou HL analyzed data and drafted the manuscript; and all the authors contributed to the interpretation of the results, manuscript revision, and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by Wuxi Taihu Talent Project, No. WXTTP 2021; and the General Scientific Research Program of Wuxi Municipal Health Commission, No. M202447.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the Wuxi Mental Health Center, No. WXMHCIRB2025 LLky018.
Informed consent statement: All participants enrolled in this study provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: Data used in this study can be made available from the corresponding author upon request.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Zhen-He Zhou, PhD, Chief Physician, Full Professor, Department of Psychiatry, The Affiliated Mental Health Center of Jiangnan University, No. 156 Qianrong Road, Wuxi 214151, Jiangsu Province, China. zhouzh@njmu.edu.cn
Received: July 2, 2025
Revised: August 12, 2025
Accepted: October 11, 2025
Published online: December 19, 2025
Processing time: 149 Days and 0.9 Hours
Revised: August 12, 2025
Accepted: October 11, 2025
Published online: December 19, 2025
Processing time: 149 Days and 0.9 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: We have developed and designed a novel dual-task paradigm to investigate attentional switching function in patients with major depressive disorder. This paradigm integrates event-related potential technology, enabling the precise capture of brain activity during attentional switching tasks. This study revealed neurophysiological characteristics associated with attentional switching abnormalities in patients with major depressive disorder, offering valuable insights into the underlying neural mechanisms and potentially guiding future targeted interventions for depression.