fMRI may reveal depression ‘subtypes’ and treatments that could work

fMRI may reveal depression ‘subtypes’ and treatments that could work

Subject: Sci

Sec: Health

Context:

Antidepressants and therapy can provide much needed relief to people with mental health illnesses. Antidepressants can provide much needed relief to people with mental health illnesses.

Brain biomarker:

• Like the heart, the brain has electrical activity, too. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine can capture this activity and the way it changes over time through electric signals.
• In those with mental illness, the underlying brain circuits that connect different regions don’t activate normally.
• One region can have more intense electrical activity than it does in a healthy person.
• Different people have different patterns, both normal and abnormal.
• When some of them were shared between people with a specific mental illness, the researchers called it a subtype.
• In this way, many studies have subtyped depression based on brain activity. But the new study used a “theory-driven” approach to create subtypes that are also clinically relevant.

MRI:

• Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is anon-invasive diagnostic procedure used to obtain detailed images of soft tissues within the body.
• It is particularly valuable forimaging sophisticated structures like the brain, cardiovascular system, spinal cord, joints, muscles, liver, and arteries.
• MRI is instrumental in diagnosing and monitoring various conditions, including cancer, neurological disorders (such as Alzheimer’s and stroke), and cardiovascular diseases.
• Functional MRI (fMRI) can also assess brain activity by monitoring changes in blood flow.