White matters
Statistics related to depression is overwhelming- 350 million people suffer from it, and 800,000 of them end their own lives every year as a result of being ignored.
Although researchers have made major strides forward in the the treatment of depression, the mental disorder still very much remains a mystery. However, since the past decade, there has been mounting evidence that it’s a neurological disorder rather than an exclusively psychological one
In the support of this hypothesis, a study conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Edinburgh has found that the brain’s white matter is of lower quality in individuals with depression.
The paper appearing in the journal Scientific Reports describes a link between depression and the structure of white matter in the brain, which we use to process our emotions and thoughts.
The data obtained by studying 3,461 people in the U.K. Biobank database, adds to a growing body of research that supports the understanding that depression as a physical condition rather than a chemical or purely psychological one. This has instigated a fundamental change in the way depression is treated.
Heather Whalley, who led the team, said in a Biobank press release that “there is an urgent need to provide treatment for depression and an improved understanding of it[s] mechanisms will give us a better chance of developing new and more effective methods of treatment. Our next steps will be to look at how the absence of changes in the brain relates to better protection from distress and low mood.”
The study was carried out using diffusion tensor imaging — which is based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) — to create highly detailed maps of the fibers in the brain. Scans revealed that the white matter integrity – the quality of the white matter – was reduced in people who reported symptoms of depression, while in those with no symptoms the white matter integrity appeared to be normal.
That difference might as well be a result of patterns of brain activity brought on by depression, and although we can’t draw any definitive conclusions out of it, this research is definitely a step forward in terms of understanding depression’s impact on the brain and finding ways to put a stop to it.
The team has now begun to use magnetic pulses to target the specific parts of the mind that are associated with depression — “actually changing how the brain circuits are arranged, how they talk to each other.”
