Neuroimaging in Psychiatric Disorders

Abstract

Summary In psychiatry, neuroimaging facilitates the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders and the development of new medications. It is used to detect structural lesions causing psychosis and to differentiate depression from neurodegenerative disorders or brain tumors. Functional neuroimaging, mostly in the form of molecular neuroimaging with positron emission tomography or single photon emission tomography, facilitates the identification of therapeutic targets, the determination of the dose of a new drug needed to occupy its target in the brain, and the selection of patients for clinical trials.

Metabolic and Functional Connectivity Changes in Mal de Debarquement Syndrome

“…These included the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex activity that correlated with depression [34]–[36] and dorsal midbrain and anterior temporal lobe activity correlating with anxiety [37]–[39]. There are no resting state FDG PET studies in anxiety disorders that have shown abnormalities in baseline metabolic activity in the entorhinal cortex or amygdala but amygdala activity is inducible in many anxiety subtypes when measured with fMRI [40], [41]. Baseline glucose metabolism has been found to be higher in the left amygdala in depressed patients when analysis is limited to a region of interest over the amygdala [42].…”

Functional Neuroimaging in Psychiatry—Aiding in Diagnosis and Guiding Treatment. What the American Psychiatric Association Does Not Know

“…Functional brain scans, such as SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) or PET (positron emission tomography) have shown that patients presenting with the same symptoms of depression can have very different functional features occurring in their brains (24). Indeed, some of the anatomic circuits of depression and mood regulation have been revealed by converging evidence from SPECT, PET, and fMRI studies of depression, as well as the analysis of the effects of either traumatic lesions resulting in depressive symptoms or surgical interventions used to treat severe cases of depression (25,26). A network of brain regions have been revealed by convergent neuroimaging findings, which includes the dorsal prefrontal cortex, ventral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate gyrus, amygdala, hippocampus, striatum, and thalamus, and together contribute to the pathophysiology of depression (27)(28)(29).…”

Neuroimaging in Psychiatric Disorders: A Bibliometric Analysis of the 100 Most Highly Cited Articles

“…This misalignment between etiologies and diagnoses is problematic. To improve the diagnosis and treatment of primary psychiatric disorders, efforts have been made to search for reliable biomarkers that would help elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms of psychiatric disorders, identify at‐risk populations, develop pharmaceutical drugs, and provide etiology‐based treatments …”

“…To improve the diagnosis and treatment of primary psychiatric disorders, efforts have been made to search for reliable biomarkers that would help elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms of psychiatric disorders, identify at-risk populations, develop pharmaceutical drugs, and provide etiology-based treatments. 5 In 1976, the newly invented computer tomography (CT) was used to study enlarged cerebral ventricles in schizophrenic patients, providing hope that neuroimaging would be an effective tool to identify reliable biomarkers for psychiatry. 4,6 In the following decades, research interest and output in this field have grown exponentially, made possible by rapid emergence of new and improved neuroimaging modalities, particularly the positron emission tomography (PET, first use in psychiatry in 1979 7 ), structural (sMRI, first use in psychiatry in 1983 8 ), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI, first use in psychiatry in 1994 9 ).…”