Brain Imaging Identifies Biomarkers of Mental Illness

Traditionally, psychiatric disorders such as depression have been diagnosed based on symptoms according to subjective assessments. The identification of biomarkers to aid in diagnosis and treatment selection would greatly advance treatments.

In the current study, the investigators used brain imaging data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study of nearly 12,000 children aged 9 to 10 at the beginning of the study. Modern neuroimaging techniques, including resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analysis, allow researchers to investigate the organization of brain circuits through their interaction with one another over time.

Yihong Yang, PhD said, “Using a functional MRI dataset, we identified a brain connectivity variate that is positively correlated with cognitive functions and negatively correlated with psychopathological measures.”

Cognition has long been studied in the context of mental disorders, and recent research has pointed to shared neurobiology between the two, as supported in this new study.

This brain-based variate predicted how many psychiatric disorders were identified in participants at the time of the scan and over the following two years. It also predicted the transition of diagnosis across disorders over the two-year follow-up period.”

Dr. Yang added, “These findings provide evidence for a transdiagnostic brain-based measure that underlies individual differences in developing psychiatric disorders in early adolescence.”

Dr. Yang added, “Finding biomarkers of mental illnesses, rather than relying on symptoms, may provide a more precise means of diagnosis, and thereby aligning psychiatric diagnosis with other medical diagnoses.”

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Sources:

Xiang Xiao, Christopher Hammond, Betty Jo Salmeron, Danni Wang, Hong Gu, Tianye Zhai, Hieu Nguyen, Hanbing Lu, Thomas J. Ross, Yihong Yang. Brain Functional Connectome Defines a Transdiagnostic Dimension Shared by Cognitive Function and Psychopathology in Preadolescents. Biological Psychiatry, 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2023.08.028

Elsevier. “Brain imaging identifies biomarkers of mental illness.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 November 2023. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231109141454.htm>.

Materials provided by Elsevier. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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