Neuroimaging Brain Changes Associated With Depression Treatment: A Meta-Analytic Informed Investigation
Despite the promise of neuroimaging to provide new insights into psychiatric disorders, there remains debate about the potential for applications of neuroimaging findings to psychiatric clinical practice. Various solutions have been put forth to improve the inclusion of neuroimaging in psychiatry such as focusing on patient outcomes and using larger neuroimaging datasets. The present work explores these two different solutions to glean new insights into brain changes associated with depression treatment. First, coordinate based meta-analysis was utilized to search for brain areas that underwent a change in activity following a variety of depression treatment types, ranging from psychopharmacological treatments to emerging therapies such as ketamine. This revealed a common area in the right amygdala that underwent activity change associated with treatment in 353 patients with depression. To search for treatment associated brain changes in a larger neuroimaging dataset, data from a Human Connectome Project dataset was utilized. In this dataset of 107 patients, pre- and post- treatment functional magnetic resonance imaging during an emotion task was compared to investigate brain changes following three different fast acting depression treatments. While there was significant group activation in the right amygdala prior to treatment, analysis of the changes in right amygdala activity before and after treatment revealed no significant change of activity or significant association with treatment outcome. There was also no significant change in meta-analysis identified region of interest activity nor significant association with treatment outcome. There are multiple factors that may contribute to this null finding, such as a differences between patient groups and the treatments used. Overall, this work suggests the potential for use of patient treatment outcomes data in creating more applicable neuroimaging research for depression and prompts further investigation of the role of the right amygdala in depression treatment. Additionally, this work provides caution and guidance relating to the development of larger depression datasets. Taken together, these results offer the field additional ways with which to consider the application of neuroimaging to psychiatric research.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations