Boadie Dunlop, M.D., M.S., and Helen Mayberg, M.D., both of Emory University School of Medicine, and colleagues assessed resting-state functional connectivity between the subcallosal cingulate cortex (SCC) and three other brain regions—the dorsal midbrain, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior insula, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex—in 122 patients with depression. The patients were then randomized to 12 weeks of cognitive-behavioral …
New Biomarker for Treatment Response in Depression – GPR56/ADGRG1
What happens in the body when antidepressants work. An international group of researchers, led by Professor Gustavo Turecki of McGill University and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, examined changes in the activity of genes (measured using mRNA) in the blood in over 400 patients who were being treated with antidepressants. They identified one gene that was significantly more active …
TMS Predictors of Outcome in Bipolar Depression and Unipolar Major Depression
What TMS predictors of outcome in bipolar depression and unipolar major depression can we use to identify those who are likely to respond to treatment? An article in 2017 in the journal Clinical Neurophysiology reports data from a very large series of patients with both types of depression who were treated with TMS. The study looked at records from 105 …
Predicting Lithium Response with Brain Imaging
Predicting lithium response with brain imaging may be an option in the future if the preliminary results of a study published in 2017 are confirmed. Researchers from the University of Cincinnati used three tools to create a program that was remarkably successful at predicting which bipolar patients would respond to lithium. 20 first onset bipolar patients who received adequate trials …
Functional Brain Imaging in Depression
Is there a role for functional brain imaging in depression? Many people seeking treatment are interested in the notion that the brain imaging, particularly imaging that looks at neural activity, might be useful in guiding treatment. Up until the last couple of years the answer to this question has always been that the role is primarily restricted to research settings …
Psychosis Risk Prediction
Accurate psychosis risk prediction might allow us to provide early intervention and prevention services to young people at risk of developing psychosis. However our current tools for identifying those at risk are not able to accurately predict and identify those who might benefit from these services. A major step forward was the development of the concept of an At Risk …
Functional Brain Imaging and Antidepressant Response
One of the most exciting initiatives currently in the important area of the treatment of depression is the International Study to Predict Optimized Treatment in Depression (iSPOT-D). This large multi-center initiative is based on a private industry and academic partnership that is designed to both identify best practices in the treatment of depression and also commercialize them. The most recent publication from this …
Blood Test for Depression
How many times has a new patient in the clinic asked, “isn’t there a blood test for depression?” Always in the past we had to say that there were no reliable tests that could identify depression. There was some evidence that functional brain imaging could do so but the technique was expensive and experimental. In an article published in the …
Predicting Bipolar Disorder
Predicting bipolar disorder might allow early intervention that could change the course of the condition, or prevent at risk adults or adolescents from developing severe mood swings. But is predicting bipolar disorder a reasonable goal? What is the science behind this effort? The August 2014 issue of Bipolar Disorders (the official journal of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders) has …
Biomarker for Suicidality
A just published study by Jerry Guintivano, et al, in the July issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry reports having identified a gene that seemed to predict suicide. The study used one population to identify the risk association and then confirmed it prospectively in a second population. Zachary Kaminsky, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at …
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