One brain network may be linked to six mental health conditions

Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, drug addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorder are linked to problems in the same chain of brain regions.

Six mental health conditions can be caused by disorders in the same network of brain regions.

The statement comes from an analysis of existing medical data collections. The authors conclude that problems in the same brain network may be associated with 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 different mental health problems, but their results have been inconsistent, says Joseph Taylor of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Taylor and his colleagues wondered if this discrepancy was due to the fact that several different brain regions in the same network could play a role.

To find out more, the team reviewed the medical records of 194 Vietnam War veterans who had physical brain trauma. Veterans were more likely to be diagnosed with multiple mental disorders, including the six previously mentioned, if they had damage to areas closer to the back of the brain, including an area called the posterior parietal cortex, which is associated with spatial perception.

They were less likely to receive such a diagnosis if they had damage in the anterior part of the brain, including in the anterior cingulate gyrus, an area associated with emotions and an insula that is associated with self-awareness.

The team compared their findings to an existing map of brain connections known as the connectome. This showed that when identified areas in the back of the brain have low activity, those in the front tend to have high activity, and vice versa.

The researchers also reviewed 193 brain scan studies involving almost 16,000 people. They found that people with any of the six mental health conditions tend to have tissue wrinkling in the anterior areas or other areas associated with them.

Taken together, the findings suggest that in people without any mental illness, the posterior regions of the brain suppress the anterior regions, while in people with damage to the posterior regions, the anterior regions become overactive, which can lead to mental illness and tissue shrinkage. Taylor says.

This is supported by past surgeries by other researchers that have destroyed small parts of the brain in people with severe mental disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression who have not responded to other treatments. All the facilities that were destroyed were located in the frontline areas.

Taylor’s team called the schema the transdiagnostic network because it appears to be involved in so many different psychiatric diagnoses. He plans to increase brain activity in the posterior regions using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation as a potential treatment for mental illness.

The findings are consistent with the idea that different mental illnesses do not have different causes, but that all may have a common underlying cause, or “p-factor.” The idea is controversial because conditions like depression and schizophrenia have very different symptoms.

“The results add to the growing body of evidence that most mental disorders share a common vulnerability,” says Terry Moffitt of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.