daniel hermens, University of the Costa del Sol; Jim Lagopoulos, University of the Costa del SolY zach-shan, University of the Costa del Sol
Despite the best efforts of doctors and researchers over decades, we still don’t fully understand why some people develop mental disorders and others don’t. However, it is very likely that changes in the brain are our best clues to future mental health outcomes.
The adolescent brain is particularly important in this quest as changes during this period are rapid and dynamic, sculpting our individual uniqueness. Furthermore, most mental disorders arise during adolescence, with more than half occurring by age 14 and three-quarters by age 25.
By monitoring and tracking brain changes as they occur, we can address emerging mental health issues in adolescence and target early treatment. The challenge is to accurately predict the probability that a person will develop a mental disorder, long before it happens.
We are investigators of the first Longitudinal Study of the Adolescent Brain (LABS). We have been tracking adolescent brain development using MRI scans for several years. our recent paper is the first to show the uniqueness of the adolescent brain (or its “brain fingerprint”) can predict mental health outcomes.
Brain fingerprinting could be the future of mental disorder prevention, allowing us to identify signs of worry in adolescents through brain imaging and intervene before the disease develops.
Our unique brains in action
Just as fingerprints are unique, each human brain has a unique profile of signals between brain regions that become more individual and specialized as people age.
To date, our study involves 125 participants, ages 12 and up, with more than 500 brain scans between them. Our research captures brain development and mental health in adolescents over the age of five. Uses quarterly brain imaging (magnetic resonance Y EEG), and psychological and cognitive evaluations.
We look at each individual functional connectome – your brain’s neural pathway system in action. We found that how unique these features are is significantly associated with new psychological distress reported at the time of subsequent scans four months later. In other words, the level of uniqueness seems to predict a mental health outcome.
MRIs were performed during a resting state, unlike task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging. It still tells us a lot about brain activity, such as how the brain keeps connections working or getting ready to do something. You could compare this to a mechanic, listening to an engine idle before you take it for a drive.
In the 12-year-olds we studied, we found that there are unique functional connectomes throughout the brain. But a more specific network, involved in the control goal-directed behavior – is less unique in early adolescence. In other words, this network remains quite similar between different people.
We found that the extent of your uniqueness can predict symptoms of anxiety and depression that emerge later on. So those with less unique brains had higher levels of future distress.
rich insights
We suspect that the level of maturation in this brain network, the part that involves executive control or goal-directed behaviors, may provide a biological explanation for why some adolescents have a higher vulnerability to mental distress. It may be that delays in “fine tuning” such executive function networks lead to an increase in mental health problems.
By conducting brain scans and other assessments at regular intervals, up to 15 times for each participant, LABS not only provides detailed information about adolescent brain development, but can better identify the onset and onset of mental health problems.
Our approach allows us to better establish the occurrence and sequence of changes in the brain (and in behaviors, lifestyle factors, thinking) and mental health risks and problems.
In addition to unique brain signatures for predicting psychological distress, we hope that there are other ways (using machine learning) we can interpret information about a person’s brain. This will bring us closer to accurately predicting your mental health and wellness outcomes. Data-rich studies over a long period of time are the key to finding this “holy grail” of neuroscience.
Identifying mental health risk in adolescents means we can intervene before adulthood, when many mental health disorders take root and are harder to resolve.
It’s worth it
This vision of the future of mental health care offers hope in the wake of recent 2020-21 statistics National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing. They revealed that two in five Australians aged 16 to 24 had a mental disorder in the previous year, the highest rate of any age group. This is a 50% jump from the last national survey in 2007.
With AU$11 billion spent in mental health-related services in Australia each year, better prevention through early detection should be an urgent priority.
daniel hermensProfessor of Juvenile Mental Health and Neurobiology, University of the Costa del Sol; Jim LagopoulosDirector, Thompson Institute, University of the Costa del SolY zach-shanExperienced Research Fellow, University of the Costa del Sol
This article is republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the Original article.
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