Neurostructural impact of co-occurring anxiety in pediatric patients with major depressive disorder: A voxel-based morphometry study (original) (raw)
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Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 2019
Although anxiety and depression often co-occur and share some clinical features, it is still unclear if they are neurobiologically distinct or similar processes. In this study, we explored common and specific cortical morphology alterations in depression and anxiety disorders. Magnetic Resonance Imaging data were acquired from 13 Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), 11 Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), 11 Panic Disorder (PD) patients and 21 healthy controls (HC). Regional cortical thickness, surface area (SA), volume and gyrification were measured and compared among groups. We found left orbitofrontal thinning in all patient groups, as well as disease-specific alterations. MDD showed volume deficits in left precentral gyrus compared to all groups, volume and area deficits in right fusiform gyrus compared to GAD and HC. GAD showed lower SA than MDD and PD in right superior parietal cortex, higher gyrification than HC in right frontal gyrus. PD showed higher gyrification in left superior parietal cortex when compared to MDD and higher SA in left postcentral gyrus compared to all groups. Our results suggest that clinical phenotypic similarities between major depression and anxiety disorders might rely on common prefrontal alterations. Frontotemporal and parietal abnormalities may represent unique biological signatures of depression and anxiety.
Journal of neurology, 2015
An overlap frequently occurs between major depression disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Aim of this study was to assess cortical and white matter (WM) alterations in MDD patients with or without GAD comorbidity. Seventy-one MDD patients and 71 controls were recruited. All subjects underwent T1-weighted and diffusion tensor (DT)/MRI. MRI metrics of cortical thickness and WM integrity were obtained from atlas-based cortical regions and the interhemispheric and major long association WM tracts. Between-group MRI comparisons and multiple regressions with clinical scale scores were performed. Compared to controls, both MDD and MDD-GAD patients showed a cortical thinning of the middle frontal cortex bilaterally, left medial frontal gyrus and frontal pole. Compared to controls and MDD patients, MDD-GAD cases also showed a thinning of the right medial orbitofrontal and fusiform gyri, and left temporal pole and lateral occipital cortices. Compared to controls, MDD patien...
Neurology, 2015
An overlap frequently occurs between major depression disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Aim of this study was to assess cortical and white matter (WM) alterations in MDD patients with or without GAD comorbidity. Seventy-one MDD patients and 71 controls were recruited. All subjects underwent T1weighted and diffusion tensor (DT)/MRI. MRI metrics of cortical thickness and WM integrity were obtained from atlas-based cortical regions and the interhemispheric and major long association WM tracts. Between-group MRI comparisons and multiple regressions with clinical scale scores were performed. Compared to controls, both MDD and MDD-GAD patients showed a cortical thinning of the middle frontal cortex bilaterally, left medial frontal gyrus and frontal pole. Compared to controls and MDD patients, MDD-GAD cases also showed a thinning of the right medial orbitofrontal and fusiform gyri, and left temporal pole and lateral occipital cortices. Compared to controls, MDD patients showed DT MRI abnormalities of the right parahippocampal tract and superior longitudinal fasciculus bilaterally, while no WM alterations were found in MDD-GAD. In all patients, brain abnormalities were related with symptom severity. MDD and MDD-GAD share a common pattern of cortical alterations located in the frontal regions. However, while both the cortex and WM integrity are affected in MDD, only the former is affected in MDD-GAD. These findings support the notion of MDD-GAD as a distinct clinical entity, providing insights into patient vulnerability for specific networks as well as into patient resilience factors reflected by the integrity of other cerebral circuits.
EBioMedicine, 2017
An overlap of clinical symptoms between major depressive disorder (MDD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) suggests that the two disorders exhibit similar brain mechanisms. However, few studies have directly compared the brain structures of the two disorders. The aim of this study was to assess the gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness alterations between non-comorbid medication-naive MDD patients and SAD patients. High-resolution T1-weighted images were acquired from 37 non-comorbid MDD patients, 24 non-comorbid SAD patients and 41 healthy controls (HCs). Voxel-based morphometry analysis of the GMV (corrected with a false discovery rate of p<0.001) and vertex-based analysis of cortical thickness (corrected with a clusterwise probability of p<0.001) were performed, and group differences were compared by ANOVA followed by post hoc tests. Relative to the HCs, both the MDD patients and SAD patients showed the following results: GMV reductions in the bilateral orbital fro...
International psychogeriatrics / IPA, 2015
Structural gray matter characteristics of anxiety remain unclear. The aim of this study was to assess the influence of current depressive symptoms and history of depression on the gray matter characteristics of trait anxiety. Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 393 individuals aged 65 years or older were used. Regions of interest (ROIs) included the amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), insula, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and temporal cortex. Trait anxiety was measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Depression and depressive symptoms were measured using DSM-IV criteria and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CESD). After adjustments for sociodemographics and health-related variables, anxiety had a significant influence on the gray matter characteristics in all cortical ROIs. First, in participants without depression antecedents, higher trait anxiety was associated with a larger cortical thickness in all cortical ROIs. Second,...
Journal of Affective Disorders
Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) has been widely used to quantify structural brain changes associated with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). While some consistent findings have been reported, individual studies have also varied with respect to the key brain regions affected by the illness, and how these abnormalities are related to patients' clinical characteristics. Here, we aimed to identify those brain regions that most consistently showed gray matter anomalies in MDD, and their clinical correlates, using meta-analytic techniques.A systematic search of VBM studies was applied in MDD. Signed differential mapping, a new coordinate based neuroimaging meta-analysis technique, was applied to data collated from a total of 23 studies comparing regional gray matter volumes of 986 MDD patients and 937 healthy controls.Gray matter was significantly reduced in a confined cluster located in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). There were also gray matter reductions in dorsolateral and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and decrease in the latter region was evident in patients with multiple-episodes. Amygdala and parahippocampal gray matter volumes were significantly reduced in studies including patients with comorbid anxiety disorders, as well as in first-episode/drug free samples.Gray matter reduction in rostral ACC was the most consistent finding in VBM studies of MDD. The evidence for reductions in other regions within fronto-subcortical and limbic regions was less consistent. The associations between these gray matter anomalies and clinical characteristics, particularly measures relating to illness duration, suggest that chronic MDD has a robust and deleterious, albeit spatially focal, effect on brain structure.
Regional Brain Volume in Depression and Anxiety Disorders
Archives of General Psychiatry, 2010
Major depressive disorder (MDD), panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder are among the most prevalent and frequently co-occurring psychiatric disorders in adults and may have, at least in part, a common etiology. Objective: To identify the unique and shared neuroanatomical profile of depression and anxiety, controlling for illness severity, medication use, sex, age of onset, and recurrence.
NeuroImage: Clinical, 2020
We present a Human Connectome Project study tailored toward adolescent anxiety and depression. This study is one of the first studies of the Connectomes Related to Human Diseases initiative and is collecting structural, functional, and diffusion-weighted brain imaging data from up to 225 adolescents (ages 14-17 years), 150 of whom are expected to have a current diagnosis of an anxiety and/or depressive disorder. Comprehensive clinical and neuropsychological evaluations and longitudinal clinical data are also being collected. This article provides an overview of task functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) protocols and preliminary findings (N = 140), as well as clinical and neuropsychological characterization of adolescents. Data collection is ongoing for an additional 85 adolescents, most of whom are expected to have a diagnosis of an anxiety and/or depressive disorder. Data from the first 140 adolescents are projected for public release through the National Institutes of Health Data Archive (NDA) with the timing of this manuscript. All other data will be made publicly-available through the NDA at regularly scheduled intervals. This article is intended to serve as an introduction to this project as well as a reference for those seeking to clinical, neurocognitive, and task fMRI data from this public resource. 2011; see also Ahmed et al., 2015; Casey, 2015; Somerville et al., 2010). These circuits have also been implicated in the development and persistence of two of the most common types of adolescent psychiatric disorders: anxiety and depression. We detail the Human Connectome Project (HCP) study of adolescent anxiety and depression and discuss National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research domain criteria (RDoC)-consistent neuroimaging tasks selected to elicit activation in cognitive control-, emotion-, and reward-related brain regions. We also provide preliminary task-functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) results and detail adolescent clinical and neuropsychological characterization. The HCP provides resources for acquiring, processing, analyzing, and sharing standardized, open-access neuroimaging data (hereafter,
Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 2003
Background: Neurobiologic abnormalities in the temporal lobe, particularly medial temporolimbic circuits, have been implicated in the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder (MDD). Although MDD commonly emerges during childhood and adolescence, to our knowledge, no prior study has examined temporal lobe anatomy in pediatric patients with MDD near the onset of illness before treatment. Methods: Volumetric magnetic resonance imaging scans were conducted in 23 psychotropic drug-naïve pediatric patients with MDD, aged 8-17 years, and 23 case-matched healthy comparison subjects. Results: Pediatric patients with MDD had significantly larger left (14%) and right (11%) amygdala:hippocampal volume ratios than controls. Increased left and right amygdala:hippocampal volume ratios were associated with increased severity of anxiety but not increased severity of depression or duration of illness. Conclusion: These results suggest that alterations in amygdala:hippocampal volume ratios in pediatric MDD may more reflect severity of associated anxiety than depression. These results underscore the importance of assessment for comorbidity in the study of MDD.
2021
Internalizing disorders encompass anxiety, fear and depressive disorders. While the DSM-5 nosology conceptualizes anxiety and fear-related disorders as an entity, dimensional psychopathology models suggest that generalized anxiety disorders (GAD) and major depression originate from an overarching “anxious-misery” factor whereas fear-related disorders originate from the “fear” factor. Given that a neurobiological evaluation is lacking, we conducted a comparative neuroimaging meta-analysis of gray matter volume alterations to determine common and disorder-specific brain structural signatures in these disorders. The PubMed, Web of Knowledge, and Scopus databases were searched for case-control voxel-based morphometric studies through December, 2020 in GAD, fear-related anxiety disorders (FAD, i.e., social anxiety disorders, SAD; specific phobias, SP; panic disorders, PD; and agoraphobia, AG) and major depressive disorder (MDD). Neurostructural abnormalities were assessed within each dis...