Altered brain dynamic in major depressive disorder: state and trait features
Nooshin Javaheripour1,2, Lejla Colic1,3, Nils Opel1,3,4,5
1Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Jena University Hospital, Philosophenweg 3, 07743, Jena, Germany.
Translational Psychiatry
|July 17, 2023
Summary
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is linked to disrupted neural synchrony. Patients with MDD exhibit altered brain connectivity patterns over time, which correlate with depression severity, unlike healthy individuals.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
- Computational Biology
Background:
- Temporal neural synchrony disruption is associated with major depressive disorder (MDD) symptoms like mood rigidity and persistent negative emotion.
- Altered dynamic neural synchrony may contribute to the persistence and worsening of MDD symptoms.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whole-brain dynamic functional connectivity and activity patterns in MDD using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI).
- To compare brain functional dynamics between patients with MDD and healthy controls using a hidden Markov model (HMM).
Main Methods:
- Utilized HMM to analyze rs-fMRI data from 314 MDD patients and 498 healthy controls.
- Identified six recurring brain states and compared time spent and stability in each state between groups.
- Assessed the association between brain states and depression severity.
Main Results:
- MDD patients spent significantly more time and showed greater temporal stability in a state of weak global functional connectivity with high activity in somatosensory motor, salience, and dorsal attention networks.
- This specific brain state's duration and stability correlated with depression severity.
- Healthy controls exhibited a contrasting state with strong global connectivity and low overall brain activity.
Conclusions:
- Disrupted temporal brain functional synchrony is a characteristic of MDD.
- These dynamic alterations in brain connectivity are linked to the severity of depressive symptoms.
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