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World J Psychiatry. Jun 19, 2026; 16(6): 117245
Published online Jun 19, 2026. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i6.117245
Published online Jun 19, 2026. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i6.117245
Neural correlates of impairments in music emotion processing in major depressive disorder: Evidenced from an event-related potential study
Ya-Nan He, Wen-Yu Yang, Jing Zhang, Xin-Yu Wang, 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
Co-first authors: Ya-Nan He and Wen-Yu Yang.
Co-corresponding authors: Xiao-Hong Liu and Zhen-He Zhou.
Author contributions: He YN contributed to methodology, validation, and writing of original draft; He YN and Yang WY made equal contributions as co-first authors; Zhou ZH and He YN contributed to conceptualization; He YN, Wang XY, and Gao XZ contributed to software; He YN and Gao XZ contributed to formal analysis; He YN, Yang WY, and Zhang J contributed to investigation; He YN, Yang WY, Wang XY, and Gao XZ contributed to data curation; Zhang J and Zhou ZH contributed to resources; Zhou ZH contributed to supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition; Liu XH and Zhou ZH contributed to writing of review and editing and made equal contributions as co-corresponding authors; all authors approved the final version to publish.
AI contribution statement: Doubao and Gemini were utilized during the manuscript preparation. All core academic content, research concepts, data analysis, and conclusions were independently completed by all authors. No original research content or core viewpoints were directly generated by AI. Only partial sentences and linguistic expressions were optimized with auxiliary AI tools. Doubao and Gemini were applied for linguistic polishing, sentence revision, expression adjustment, and lexical refinement. No AI tools were used for translation, data analysis, or independent content creation. The study design, data interpretation, and outcome analysis were independently accomplished by all authors, with no involvement of artificial intelligence. All figures and tables in this manuscript are originally designed and produced by all authors; no AI-generated images are included.
Supported by Wuxi Taihu Talent Project, No. WXTTP2021.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by Ethics Committee of the Affiliated Mental Health Center of Jiangnan University, No. WXMHCIRB2025 LLky011.
Informed consent statement: Prior to participation, all participants were fully informed about the experimental procedures and equipment and provided written informed consent.
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:
The data supporting the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.
Corresponding author: Zhen-He Zhou, MD, PhD, Chief Physician, 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: December 3, 2025
Revised: January 27, 2026
Accepted: February 26, 2026
Published online: June 19, 2026
Processing time: 177 Days and 6.2 Hours
Revised: January 27, 2026
Accepted: February 26, 2026
Published online: June 19, 2026
Processing time: 177 Days and 6.2 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Using ecologically valid traditional Chinese instrumental music as stimuli and multi-stage event-related potentials analysis, this study found that patients with major depressive disorder exhibit multi-stage abnormalities in musical emotion processing: Enhanced central N100 amplitude (early sensory hypervigilance), failure of P200 to distinguish neutral from negative music (feature discrimination deficit), and absence of P300 emotional modulation (impaired late cognitive eva