Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia; Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, Department of Psychiatry, The University of Melbourne & Melbourne Health, Melbourne, Australia.
Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia.
Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging. 2017 Feb 28;260:62-69. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2016.12.010. Epub 2016 Dec 21.
High levels of depression during adolescence may contribute to the risk for future depression later in life. This study examined the relationship between the developmental timing of depressive symptoms, and brain structural outcomes in late adolescence. In a prior work, we examined longitudinal trajectories of depressive symptoms in 243 adolescents (121 males and 122 females), and identified four subgroups: a normative group with stable low levels of depression, two groups with declining symptoms, and one group with increasing symptoms. For the current paper, diffusion-weighted MRI images were acquired at the final wave of the study, and used to perform white matter tractography and brain network analysis. The four depression trajectory groups were tested for differences in brain connectivity variables. This revealed differences in several frontal and temporal regions. The groups that had experienced elevated depression symptoms in early adolescence differed from the normative group in a greater number of areas than the group who had experienced depression later. Affected tracts corresponded to areas of white matter that are still maturing during this period, particularly frontolimbic regions. These findings support the proposition that the timing and duration of depression symptoms during adolescence are associated with brain structural outcomes.
青少年时期的重度抑郁可能会增加以后生活中抑郁的风险。本研究探讨了抑郁症状的发展时间与青少年晚期大脑结构结果之间的关系。在之前的一项研究中，我们研究了 243 名青少年（121 名男性和 122 名女性）的抑郁症状纵向轨迹，并确定了四个亚组：一个具有稳定低水平抑郁的正常组、两个症状下降的组和一个症状上升的组。在当前的研究中，在研究的最后一个阶段采集了弥散加权 MRI 图像，并用于进行白质束追踪和大脑网络分析。对四个抑郁轨迹组的大脑连接变量进行了测试。这揭示了几个额叶和颞叶区域的差异。在青少年早期经历过重度抑郁症状的组比在后期经历过抑郁的组在更多的区域与正常组存在差异。受影响的束与这一时期仍在发育的白质区域相对应，特别是额眶区域。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即青少年时期抑郁症状的时间和持续时间与大脑结构结果有关。
