Depression in teens and young adults may be linked to problems with brain connectivity

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-09-23 19:00

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Australian researchers have taken a step towards finding a biological basis for youth depression by showing that it may be related to the connections in the brain. The researchers looked at brain scans from 810 young people aged 12-25, and found that those with major depressive disorder had alterations in connectivity in the densely connected brain areas, known as hubs. Critically, they also found that altered functional connectivity within these networks was linked to depression symptom severity. They also found that they could use this functional connectivity to predict if a person had a diagnosis of depression and their clinical severity. The authors say these hub regions could be a target for potential treatments in flexible adolescent brains.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Mental Health

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of Melbourne, Orygen, The University of New South Wales

Funder: This work was supported by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (SRG-1-141-18 to T.T.Y.), the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC; Postgraduate Scholarship grant no. 2022387 to N.Y.T., Early Career fellowship to A.R., Investigator Leadership grant no. 2017962 to L.S. and Emerging Leadership Investigator grant no. 2017527 to R.F.H.C.), the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (A.Z.), the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship (S.G.), the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (to T.T.Y. and grant no. 28972 to M.D.S.), the Dimension Giving Fund (M.D.S.), the training fellowship awarded to the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University (grant no. T32 MH016434-42 to J.S.K.), the Graeme Clark Institute top-up scholarship (S.G.), the J. Jacobson Fund (T.T.Y.), the Mary Lugton Postdoc Fellowship (Y.E.T.), the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (T.T.Y.), the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (grant nos. R21AT009173, R61AT009864, R33AT009864 to T.T.Y.), the National Institutes of Health (RO1 MH129832 to L.S. and UCSF-CTSI UL1TR001872 to T.T.Y.), the National Institute of Mental Health (project no. R01MH125850 to M.D.S. and R01MH085734 to T.T.Y.), the Rebecca L. Cooper Foundation Fellowship (A.Z.), the Rubicon award from the Dutch NOW (grant no. 452020227 to L.K.M.H.), the University of Melbourne Dame Kate Campbell fellowship (L.S.), the UCSF Research Evaluation and Allocation Committee (T.T.Y.) and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences (T.T.Y.). Data from the MR-IMPACT study site were funded by the United Kingdom Medical Research Council (G0802226) and undertaken at the University of Cambridge. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. This research was also supported by The University of Melbourne’s Research Computing Services and the Petascale Campus Initiative.

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