One brain network may be involved in six mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder

Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorder are all associated with problems in the same circuitry in brain regions.

To Claire Wilson

Damage to networks in one brain region may be involved in the development of six mental health conditions.

This claim is based on analysis of existing medical data collections. The authors conclude that problems within the same brain network may play a role in depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). .

Brain scan studies have previously suggested that several different areas of the organ are associated with various mental health problems, said Joseph Taylor of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Taylor and his colleagues suspected that the discrepancy was because many different brain regions within a single network could all play a role. rice field.

To find out more, the team looked at the health records of 194 Vietnam War veterans with physical brain injuries. Veterans can be diagnosed with multiple mental health conditions, including the six mentioned above, if they have damage to the posterior-facing areas of the brain, including an area called the posterior parietal cortex, which is associated with spatial awareness. It got higher.

Damage near the front of the brain, such as the anterior cingulate gyrus, an area associated with emotions, and the insula associated with self-awareness, made such a diagnosis less likely.

The team compared its findings to existing maps of brain connections known as the connectome. This revealed that when identified posterior brain regions were low activity, front regions tended to be high activity, and vice versa.

The researchers also looked at 193 brain scan studies involving about 16,000 people. They found that individuals with any of six mental health conditions tended to have tissue contraction in the anterior region or other areas associated with them.

Taken together, the findings suggest that in people without mental health conditions, the posterior regions of the brain suppress the anterior regions, whereas in people with posterior-region damage, the anterior regions become overactive and mentally ill. It suggests that it can lead to illness and mental illness. Tissue shrinkage, says Taylor.

This is supported by past surgeries performed by other researchers that destroyed small sections of the brain in people with severe mental health conditions, such as OCD and depression, who were unresponsive to other treatments. All sites destroyed were in the frontal region.

Taylor’s team dubbed this circuit the transformer diagnostic network. This is because it appears to be involved in so many different psychiatric diagnoses. He plans to use a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation to boost brain activity in the posterior regions as a potential treatment for mental illness.

This finding fits with the idea that, rather than having different causes for different mental illnesses, they all may have a common underlying cause, the ‘p-factor’. . This idea is controversial because the symptoms of depression and schizophrenia are very different.

Terrie Moffitt of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina said: