State-dependent and trait-related gray matter changes in nonrefractory depression

Abstract

Behavioral evidence suggests functional remission or recovery in nonrefractory depressive disorder after successful antidepressant therapy, but the effect of treatment on brain structures remains unclear. It is possible that some specific structural changes are trait-related, in addition to some state-dependent anatomical regions that could be normalized by medications. In the current study, 32 treatment-naïve nonrefractory depressive disorder patients and 34 matched healthy controls underwent structural MRI scans and a subgroup including 16 patients underwent the second scans after clinical recovery with antidepressant treatment. The statistical analysis of gray matter images showed that the state-dependent regions mainly comprised the key regions within the lateral default, dorsal attention, and frontoparietal networks, whereas the trait-related regions included the medial prefrontal cortex, right anterior insula, thalamus, right parahippocampal gyrus, and right middle occipital gyrus. Moreover, the gray matter changes in the left orbitofrontal cortex, right middle frontal gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule, thalamus, left precentral gyrus, left precuneus, and right middle occipital gyrus were significantly positively correlated with the durations of the current depressive episode. The current findings may not only shed new light on the neuronal effect of antidepressant on depression but also provide potential evidence of the relapse risks for the clinically recovered patients after antidepressant treatment.

Cortical abnormalities and association with symptom dimensions across the depressive spectrum

“…Our results from the data-driven morphometric analysis are consistent with widespread brain morphometric abnormalities associated with MDD, particularly within specific frontal and medial temporal regions of the brain (Grieve et al 2013; Zeng et al 2015). Animal models of depression have shown that the cellular effects of stress at the level of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex leads to a reduction in the structure and function of both neurons and supporting glial cells via reductions in long-term potentiation (LTP) (Kullmann and Lamsa 2011), retraction of dendritic arborizations (Haber, Zhou, and Murai 2006), and reduced volume of astroglia (Lushnikova et al 2009).…”

Gray Matter Loss and Related Functional Connectivity Alterations in A Chinese Family With Benign Adult Familial Myoclonic Epilepsy

“…We did not observe any artifacts or structural abnormalities in the structural MRI data by visual inspection. The structural MRI images were preprocessed using the previously described procedures with SPM8 package 29 (Welcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Institute of Neurology, London, UK, http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm): 1) Segmentation with New Segment procedure; 2) Template generation with DARTEL technique; 3) Spatial normalization into the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) space; 4) Smoothing with a 6-mm full-width half-maximum (FWHM) Gaussian kernel. Finally, a mask covering voxels with values above .2 was generated and then applied to all of the gray matter images.…”

Neuroanatomical predictors of response to subcallosal cingulate deep brain stimulation for treatment-resistant depression

“…53 Thalamic atrophy is present even in early, treatment-naïve depression, suggesting that it is potentially a trait marker of susceptibility to depression. 61 Further supporting this are recent data demonstrating that thalamic volume loss may be a key diagnostic feature (at the individual patient level) of pediatric unipolar depression, regardless of disease duration or extent of previous psychotropic medication use. 62 There is also growing evidence that thalamic volume may be modulated by genetic factors known to be important in depression, including the Val66Met polymorphism in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene, as well as the serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphism.…”