Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy for Psychiatry: Progress in the Last Decade

Psychiatric disorders are common and can be severe. There is a need to identify biomarkers of psychiatric disorders to better diagnose and treat patients with psychiatric symptoms. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is a tool used to measure the levels of various metabolites in the human brain, and MRS studies of psychiatric disorders have identified potentially useful biomarkers of psychiatric illness. There have been significant advances in the way that psychiatric disorders are understood, classified, and researched as well as improvements in magnetic resonance imaging/MRS technology. MRS as a tool has not yet proved helpful to individual patients with psychiatric symptoms.