Changes in brain network properties in major depressive disorder following electroconvulsive therapy: a combined static and dynamic functional magnetic resonance imaging study
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Date
2022-06-29
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Annals of Palliative Medicine
Abstract
Background:
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common and intractable mood disorder.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a common means of brain electrical stimulation for the treatment of
MDD, but the neurobiological mechanism of its clinical symptom relief effect is still to be explored. This
study aims to explore how ECT plays a role in depression remissions by investigating the changes of static
and dynamic brain network characteristics in MDD patients before and after ECT.
Methods:
Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were obtained from nine
MDD patients twice before and after a full course of ECT, all of whom responded to ECT as defined by at
least a 50% reduction from baseline Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD) scores. Both static and dynamic
characteristics of the functional brain network were compared between the pre- and post-ECT scans for all
participants, and the correlations between changes in clinical symptoms and altered network metrics were
also investigated.
Results:
The clustering coefficient and local efficiency in static brain networks were increased significantly,
while the global flexibility of dynamic brain networks was decreased significantly after ECT. Several regions
of interest (ROIs) that changed significantly at the local level were also identified, which involved regions of
the cerebellum, hippocampus as well as frontal and temporal cortices. Although not significant, the decrease
of HAMD scores were associated with trends of changed network metrics after ECT.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that ECT may alleviate the depressive symptoms of MDD by decreasing
the randomness of the brain network as reflected by changes in both static and dynamic network properties
and that the temporal gyrus, frontal gyrus, hippocampus, and cerebellar regions may play key roles in such
mechanisms. These findings have important implications for our understandings of ECT and depression.
However, this study is limited by a relatively small sample size and the results should be confirmed in larger
samples
Description
Keywords
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), Depression, Brain nertwork
Citation
Liu, D., Tang, S., Wu, Z., Yang, J., Liu, Z., Wu, G., Sariah, A., Ouyang, X. and Long, Y., 2022. Changes in brain network properties in major depressive disorder following electroconvulsive therapy: a combined static and dynamic functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Annals of Palliative Medicine.