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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology
First I'd like to say that depression is more than just low monoamine levels in the brain (serotonin and dopamine). While its been popularized that low serotonin levels = sad, depression is a complex and heterogeneous disease that involves other neurotransmitters such as GABA and glycine as well as alterations in brain connectivity. And research into structural and functional brain imaging is a great way to show that.
MRI scans of people with depression have shown a large variety of changes but the most consistent change was decreased size of the hippocampus (memory center). Functionally, we can see decreased overall connectivity between brain regions and particularly decreased connectivity from the prefrontal cortex (executive functions) and other regions.
Unfortunately, the presentation of depression is so varied that its impossible right now to look at a brain scan and tell whether or not someone has depression. Decreased hippocampal volume can be seen in other diseases like Alzheimer's or just aging. Most likely depression (IE major depressive disorder) is actually multiple diseases that have the same presentation. Once we can differentiate these different diseases, we may be able to correlate brain scan changes to disease better than we can now.
MRI for depression: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0680-6[1][2]
1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0680-6
2: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0680-6
There's nothing here!