Identifying biomarkers for serious mental illnesses (SMI) has significant implications for prevention and early intervention. In the current study, changes in whole brain structural and functional connectomes were investigated in youth at transdiagnostic risk over a one-year period. Based on clinical assessments, participants were assigned to one of 5 groups: healthy controls (HC; n = 33), familial risk for serious mental illness (stage 0; n = 31), mild symptoms (stage 1a; n = 37), attenuated syndromes (stage 1b; n = 61), or discrete disorder (transition; n = 9).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Transcranial temporal interference stimulation (tTIS) is a new, emerging neurostimulation technology that utilizes two or more electric fields at specific frequencies to modulate the oscillations of neurons at a desired spatial location in the brain. The physics of tTIS offers the advantage of modulating deep brain structures in a non-invasive fashion and with minimal stimulation of the overlying cortex outside of a selected target. As such, tTIS can be effectively employed in the context of therapeutics for the psychiatric disease of disrupted brain connectivity, such as major depressive disorder (MDD).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMajor depressive disorder (MDD) is a heterogeneous clinical syndrome with widespread subtle neuroanatomical correlates. Our objective was to identify the neuroanatomical dimensions that characterize MDD and predict treatment response to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants or placebo. In the COORDINATE-MDD consortium, raw MRI data were shared from international samples ( = 1,384) of medication-free individuals with first-episode and recurrent MDD ( = 685) in a current depressive episode of at least moderate severity, but not treatment-resistant depression, as well as healthy controls ( = 699).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Little is known about the interplay between genetics and epigenetics on antidepressant treatment (1) response and remission, (2) side effects, and (3) serum levels. This study explored the relationship among single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), DNA methylation (DNAm), and mRNA levels of four pharmacokinetic genes, , , , and , and its effect on these outcomes.
Methods: The Canadian Biomarker Integration Network for Depression-1 dataset consisted of 177 individuals with major depressive disorder treated for 8 weeks with escitalopram (ESC) followed by 8 weeks with ESC monotherapy or augmentation with aripiprazole.
Background: A critical challenge in the study and management of major depressive disorder (MDD) is predicting relapse. We examined the temporal correlation/coupling between depression and anxiety (called Depression-Anxiety Coupling Strength, DACS) as a predictor of relapse in patients with MDD.
Methods: We followed 97 patients with remitted MDD for an average of 394 days.
Clinical studies of major depression (MD) generally focus on group effects, yet interindividual differences in brain function are increasingly recognized as important and may even impact effect sizes related to group effects. Here, we examine the magnitude of individual differences in relation to group differences that are commonly investigated (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) last published clinical guidelines for the management of major depressive disorder (MDD) in 2016. Owing to advances in the field, an update was needed to incorporate new evidence and provide new and revised recommendations for the assessment and management of MDD in adults.
Methods: CANMAT convened a guidelines editorial group comprised of academic clinicians and patient partners.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging
August 2024
Neural network-level changes underlying symptom remission in major depressive disorder (MDD) are often studied from a single perspective. Multimodal approaches to assess neuropsychiatric disorders are evolving, as they offer richer information about brain networks. A pipeline was developed to integrate a computationally intense data fusion method with a toolbox, to produce a faster and more intuitive pipeline for combining functional connectivity with structural connectivity (denoted as anatomically weighted functional connectivity ()).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examine structural brain characteristics across three diagnostic categories: at risk for serious mental illness; first-presenting episode and recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD). We investigate whether the three diagnostic groups display a stepwise pattern of brain changes in the cortico-limbic regions. Integrated clinical and neuroimaging data from three large Canadian studies were pooled (total n = 622 participants, aged 12-66 years).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Identifying neuroimaging biomarkers of antidepressant response may help guide treatment decisions and advance precision medicine.
Aims: To examine the relationship between anhedonia and functional neurocircuitry in key reward processing brain regions in people with major depressive disorder receiving aripiprazole adjunct therapy with escitalopram.
Method: Data were collected as part of the CAN-BIND-1 study.
Preclinical research implicates stress-induced upregulation of the enzyme, serum- and glucocorticoid-regulated kinase 1 (SGK1), in reduced hippocampal volume. In the current study, we tested the hypothesis that greater SGK1 mRNA expression in humans would be associated with lower hippocampal volume, but only among those with a history of prolonged stress exposure, operationalized as childhood maltreatment (physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse). Further, we examined whether baseline levels of SGK1 and hippocampal volume, or changes in these markers over the course of antidepressant treatment, would predict treatment outcomes in adults with major depression [MDD].
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIdentifying clinically relevant predictors of depressive recurrence following treatment for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is critical for relapse prevention. Implicit self-depressed associations (SDAs), defined as implicit cognitive associations between elements of depression (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuality of life (QoL) is an important patient-centric outcome to evaluate in treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). This work sought to investigate the performance of several machine learning methods to predict a return to normative QoL in patients with MDD after antidepressant treatment. Several binary classification algorithms were trained on data from the first 2 weeks of the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) study (n = 651, conducted from 2001 to 2006) to predict week 9 normative QoL (score ≥ 67, based on a community normative sample, on the Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire-Short Form [Q-LES-Q-SF]) after treatment with citalopram.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMajor depressive disorder (MDD) is a chronic illness wherein relapses contribute to significant patient morbidity and mortality. Near-term prediction of relapses in MDD patients has the potential to improve outcomes by helping implement a 'predict and preempt' paradigm in clinical care. In this study, we developed a novel personalized (N-of-1) encoder-decoder anomaly detection-based framework of combining anomalies in multivariate actigraphy features (passive) as triggers to utilize an active concurrent self-reported symptomatology questionnaire (core symptoms of depression and anxiety) to predict near-term relapse in MDD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChildhood maltreatment (CM) is a strong transdiagnostic risk factor for future psychopathology. This risk is theorized to emerge partly because of glucocorticoid-mediated atrophy in the hippocampus, which leaves this area sensitive to further volume loss even through adulthood in the face of future stress and the emergence of psychopathology. This proof-of-principle study examines which specific dimensions of internalizing psychopathology in the context of a CM history are associated with decreases in hippocampal volume over a 6-month period.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Anhedonia is the core symptom of depression. Its presence has been linked to worsened prognosis. The Dimensional Anhedonia Rating Scale (DARS) is a scale measuring desire, motivation, effort and consummatory pleasure across different domains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Treatment-emergent sexual dysfunction is frequently reported by individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) on antidepressants, which negatively impacts treatment adherence and efficacy. We investigated the association of polymorphisms in pharmacokinetic genes encoding cytochrome-P450 drug-metabolizing enzymes, and , and the transmembrane efflux pump, P-glycoprotein (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Untreated depression is a growing public health concern, with patients often facing a prolonged trial-and-error process in search of effective treatment. Developing a predictive model for treatment response in clinical practice remains challenging.
Objective: To establish a model based on electroencephalography (EEG) to predict response to 2 distinct selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) medications.