Seminar Series in Quantitative Life Sciences and Medicine
"Resting-state connectivity biomarkers define neurophysiological subtypes of depression"
Conor Liston (Weill Cornell Medicine)
Tuesday November 27, 12-1pm
Montreal Neurological Institute, Jeanne Timmins Amphitheatre
Abstract:聽Biomarkers have transformed modern medicine but remain largely elusive in psychiatry, partly because there is a weak correspondence between diagnostic labels and their neurobiological substrates. Like other neuropsychiatric disorders, depression is not a unitary disease, but rather a heterogeneous syndrome that encompasses varied, co-occurring symptoms and divergent responses to treatment. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a large multisite sample (n = 1,188), we show here that patients with depression can be subdivided into four neurophysiological subtypes (鈥榖iotypes鈥�) defined by distinct patterns of dysfunctional connectivity in limbic and frontostriatal networks. Clustering patients on this basis enabled the development of diagnostic classifiers (biomarkers) with high (82鈥�93%) sensitivity and specificity for depression subtypes in multisite validation (n = 711) and out-of-sample replication (n = 477) data sets. These biotypes cannot be differentiated solely on the basis of clinical features, but they are associated with differing clinical-symptom profiles. They also predict responsiveness to transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy (n = 154). Our results define novel subtypes of depression that transcend current diagnostic boundaries and may be useful for identifying the individuals who are most likely to benefit from targeted neurostimulation therapies.