biomarkers for depression
A challenge in treating depression is the lack of insight into its biological mechanisms. If a person develops a fever, various tests, including bacterial and viral infections, are done to determine appropriate treatment. However, there is no similar test for depressed patients.
“This particular change in biology, the flow of signals between these two brain regions, is the first in psychiatry to predict changes in clinical symptoms,” said Professor Williams.
Not everyone with depression has this abnormal flow of neuronal activity, Williams said, and although it may be rare in less severe cases of depression, it’s still possible to triage treatment for the disorder. said that it could serve as an important biomarker for “The fMRI data that enables precision treatment with SNT can be used both as a biomarker for depression and as a personalized targeting method to treat its underlying causes,” he said.
“If you find someone with severe depression, you can look for this biomarker to determine how likely they are to respond to SNT treatment,” Mitra said.
“Behavioral states such as depression have been difficult to capture with imaging because, unlike obvious brain lesions, the relationships between different parts of the brain are subtle,” he says. said Reichl, who has been researching. “It is very encouraging that current technology is approaching the complexity of the problems we are trying to understand.
The researchers plan to replicate the study in a larger group of patients. They also hope others will employ their analytical techniques to uncover more clues about the direction of brain activity hidden in fMRI data. “As long as we have good, clean fMRI data, we can study this property of the signal,” says Mitra.
This work was supported by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator Award, the NIMH Biobehavior Research Award for Innovative Emerging Scientists (grant R01 5R01MH122754-02), the Charles R. Schwab, David and Amanda Chao Fund II. , funded by Dr. Amy Ross. Fund, Neuromodulation Research Fund, Lehman Family, Still Charitable Trust, Marshall and Dee Ann Payne Foundation, Gordy Brookstone Foundation, Melam Family Foundation, Baszucchi Brain Research Fund.