Abstract

Suicide remains a leading cause of death, highlighting the critical need to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying suicidality. This study used an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm to examine whether depressed individuals with and without suicidal ideation show distinct processing patterns for clinically relevant self-referential content. During electroencephalography, depressed individuals with (n = 46) and without (n = 44) suicidal ideation, and healthy controls (n = 48), read first-person sentences ending congruently or incongruently with depression, suicidality, or neutral biographical experiences. Linear mixed-effects models assessed group and congruency effects across early (N170), semantic (N400), and reanalysis (P600) stages. For neutral biographical (vs. non-biographical) sentences, all groups showed the expected reduction in N400 amplitudes, but the suicidal group showed a reduced …

Date

2026

Authors

Colin McDaniel, Myzelle L Hughes, Takfarinas Medani, Woojae Jeong, Thomas A McGee, Aditya Kommineni, Kleanthis Avramidis, Hamzeh Alturk, Dani Byrd, Kristina Lerman, Sudarsana R Kadiri, Idan A Blank, Richard M Leahy, Shrikanth Narayanan, B Rael Cahn, Assal Habibi

Journal

Journal of Affective Disorders

Pages

121817

Publisher

Elsevier