[Cerebral blood flow in 20 depressed adolescents]

Regional cerebral blood flow was compared in twenty depressed adolescents and ten normal controls using the Xenon 133 inhalation method. There were no differences in mean hemispheric blood flow. The main difference was the loss of the "hyperfrontal distribution" in the depressed adolescents: the prefrontal values were only 5.4% greater than the blood flow in the rest of the hemisphere, compared with 13.5% in the controls.