A new approach to preventive treatment of depression: brain markers

In the depths of the human brain, there is an almond-like structure, the amygdala. By measuring the activity of the area, it is possible to detect whether a person is at risk of stress and help judge whether it will be in the next few years. It can become depressed or anxious when dealing with many stresses in life, and even plays a crucial role in judging whether a person has depressive symptoms in the future.

Release date: 2015-02-26

Everyone has heard about depression, and more or less have some understanding. Depression is one of the diseases lurking around us. This mental disorder has become one of the most common mental illnesses in society. Many people call it a mental "cold". He is a mood disorder with a significant and lasting mood as the main clinical feature. If you suddenly lose interest in things around you, have no feeling of pleasure, and have repeated sleep problems, consider whether you have depression.

Depression is a mental illness with high prevalence, high recurrence rate, serious harm to human health and high suicide risk. A recent news report that a man suffering from depression was struggling to take care of his mother because he could not take care of the sick old mother. The number of deaths per year due to depression in the world is as high as 1 million. The World Health Organization has suggested that depression has become the fourth-largest disease threatening human health and is expected to become the second-largest disease in humans after heart disease by 2020.

In recent years, with the accelerating pace of modern life, people from all walks of life have become more and more aware of the heavy feeling that mental stress brings to people. A car accident, loss of love or financial distress is just the pressure that each of us may encounter in our lifetime. There are some people who can take it easy, while others are anxious or depressed. So, how can we cope with the pressure, handle the trouble well, and get out of the inevitable trough in life?

A new study by Duke University in the United States provides clues to answer this question. They found that there is an almond-like structure deep in the human brain - the amygdala, by measuring the activity of the area, it can detect whether a person is at risk of stress, thus helping to judge as far as several years later, Whether it will become depressed or anxious when dealing with many stresses in life, and even play a crucial role in judging whether a person has depressive symptoms in the future.

This research may eventually lead to the development of new strategies for treating depression and anxiety, and it can also prevent problems before they happen. The results of this study were published in the February 4th issue of Neurons.

In an interview with the Physicist Network on February 4th, John Schwartz, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University, the first author of the study, explained that under normal circumstances, only when a person's depression and anxiety turn into chronic After the symptoms, he will receive treatment, otherwise it will be difficult to force him to go to the clinic for medical treatment. And by marking the brain, this abnormal state develops to a certain extent, even before the destructive signs of division, we can find and guide such people to seek treatment as soon as possible.

Among them, a small study on the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in humans has suggested a link between brain activity and individual differences in stress management. At the same time, these studies focused on the amygdala fraction, and the amygdala fraction was associated with mental illness, including post-traumatic stress disorder; it was also associated with anxiety and depression, including traumatic events that participants endured. In comparison, the vast majority of the total population have experienced stress that is not too severe, such as unemployment, divorce, or death of family members, which can affect their spirit to varying degrees.

In the new study, researchers asked healthy college students to look at the angry or fearful faces of the surrounding environment that represent dangerous signals and then scan their brains. These threatened expressions usually trigger their amygdala, and researchers use non-invasive functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the intensity of this activation and indirectly measure brain activity.

Initially, 753 participants underwent brain scans, and an average of nearly 200 people completed an online survey in two years and then continued to scan for the next four years. The study found that among the healthy college students, which university student's amygdala nucleus responded to the initial study scan, the more he responded to anxiety or depressive symptoms after stress events in later scans. To be serious. And most importantly, participants who have not experienced stress recently, their apricot kernels will not show such symptoms.

Hariri, a member of the Duke Brain Science Institute and a professor of psychology and neuroscience, told us that it is important to find a simple measure to measure the brain, which can tell us a person's psychological vulnerability to stress. It can be as long as four years, and this new understanding is really amazing. He also said that the way the brain is used to predict symptoms is surprising. The new study is part of a neurogenetic study that collects long-term data on genes, brain activity, environmental factors, and related psychiatric symptoms. The ultimate goal is to understand why some people are more likely to develop depression, anxiety, and other mental health. problem.

Hariri also said: "If you isolate your DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) from a person's saliva sample and then look for specific differences in it, such a research method is easier and cheaper than having to undergo brain scans. The new study is very helpful for the doctor's work. By judging the reaction of a person's amygdala, it can prevent mental illness as soon as possible."

The research team said it wants to know how to understand a person's brain in the distant future to help understand the risks they face in life.

Source: biodiscover

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