Individualized Functional Brain System Topologies and Major Depression: Relationships Among Patch Sizes and Clinical Profiles and Behavior

Matthew D Sacchet; Poorvi Keshava; Shane W Walsh; Ruby M Potash; Meiling Li; Hesheng Liu; Diego A Pizzagalli

doi:10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.02.011

Individualized Functional Brain System Topologies and Major Depression: Relationships Among Patch Sizes and Clinical Profiles and Behavior

Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2024 Feb 28:S2451-9022(24)00062-4. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.02.011. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Matthew D Sacchet¹, Poorvi Keshava², Shane W Walsh³, Ruby M Potash⁴, Meiling Li⁵, Hesheng Liu⁶, Diego A Pizzagalli⁷

Affiliations

¹ Meditation Research Program, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts; Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. Electronic address: sacchetadmin@mgh.harvard.edu.
² Meditation Research Program, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts; Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
³ Center for Depression, Anxiety and Stress Research, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts.
⁴ Meditation Research Program, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁵ Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts.
⁶ Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts; Department of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina.
⁷ Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; Center for Depression, Anxiety and Stress Research, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts; McLean Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts.

PMID: 38417786
DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.02.011

Abstract

Background: Neuroimaging studies of major depression have typically been conducted using group-level approaches. However, given interindividual differences in brain systems, there is a need for individualized approaches to brain systems mapping and putative links toward diagnosis, symptoms, and behavior.

Methods: We used an iterative parcellation approach to map individualized brain systems in 328 participants from a multisite, placebo-controlled clinical trial. We hypothesized that participants with depression would show abnormalities in salience, control, default, and affective systems, which would be associated with higher levels of self-reported anhedonia, anxious arousal, and worse cognitive performance. Within hypothesized brain systems, we compared patch sizes (number of vertices) between depressed and healthy control groups. Within depressed groups, abnormal patches were correlated with hypothesized clinical and behavioral measures.

Results: Significant group differences emerged in hypothesized patches of 1) the lateral salience system (parietal operculum; t₃₂₆ = -3.11, p = .002) and 2) the control system (left medial posterior prefrontal cortex region; z = -3.63, p < .001), with significantly smaller patches in these regions in participants with depression than in healthy control participants. Results suggest that participants with depression with significantly smaller patch sizes in the lateral salience system and control system regions experience greater anxious arousal and cognitive deficits.

Conclusions: The findings imply that neural features mapped at the individual level may relate meaningfully to diagnosis, symptoms, and behavior. There is strong clinical relevance in taking an individualized brain systems approach to mapping neural functional connectivity because these associated region patch sizes may help advance our understanding of neural features linked to psychopathology and foster future patient-specific clinical decision making.

Keywords: Computational neuroimaging; Functional brain systems; Individualized brain mapping; Major depressive disorder; Neuroscience; Person-specific approaches.