Many studies indicated that individuals with major depressive disorder MDD prefer to listen to sad music compared to those who don’t suffer from MDD. As it is a condition that significantly impacts an individual’s quality of life, it is imperative to understand how emotional auditory input affects their mood and its possibilities in alleviating symptoms of MDD. Our objective is to identify the regions of the brain that are activated given musical and non-musical stimuli in subjects with MDD and a never-depressed control group. Additionally, we aim to estimate the connection between those identified brain regions. T-contrast analysis was used to identify activation patterns in the fMRI images. A Functional Connectivity analysis was performed to determine the connectivity between regions of interest that could potentially be used as targets to treat MDD. The results showed that the Auditory Cortex (AC) was the most activated region in the brain. The region with the highest connectivity with that region was identified as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Moreover, this connectivity between these two regions is lower in the MDD subjects than in the control subjects. In conclusion, the ACC is strongly stimulated when emotional auditory paradigms are applied and should be included in targeted auditory treatment for MDD.
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