Six different mental disorders may be related to one brain network: depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Disruptions in just a single network of brain regions may play a role in as many as six mental disorders. This follows from an analysis of existing medical data. The authors of the publication in Nature Human Behavior conclude that problems within this network may be involved in depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD).
Brain damage
Brain scans showed that various brain regions are associated with mental health problems. But those results weren’t consistent, says neuropsychiatrist Joseph Taylor, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He and his colleagues wondered if the inconsistency might be due to multiple different brain regions within the same network.
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The team looked at the health records of 194 Vietnam veterans with brain damage. If the damage was to the back of the brain, they were more likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness. That was, for example, the posterior parietal cortexa brain region involved in spatial perception.
The veterans were less likely to receive a diagnosis if their brains were damaged in the front. There lies the anterior cingulatean area associated with emotions, and the insulainvolved in self-awareness.
Brain map
The team compared the findings to an existing map of brain connections. This showed that if the brain areas at the back are not very active, the front is active, and vice versa.
The researchers also looked at 193 studies involving brain scans of nearly 16,000 people. They found that people with one of the six conditions listed were more likely to have shrunken brain tissue in the regions at the front, or areas associated with them.
Taken together, it seems that in people without mental health problems, the back of the brain slows down the front. In people with damage to the rear, that inhibition is less and the front is too active. That can lead to mental health problems and brain tissue shrinkage, Taylor says.
Stimulation
Taylor’s team has the network they discovered transdiagnostic network because it has been implicated in several psychiatric disorders. He plans to boost brain activity at the back, with the technique transcranial magnetic stimulation. That can be a treatment for mental disorders.
The results are consistent with the idea that mental disorders do not all have separate causes, but that they share an underlying mechanism, the so-called p-factor. But this idea is controversial because the symptoms of, for example, depression and schizophrenia are completely different.