Brain Scans Reveal New Therapies for Depression

Scientists believe that they may be able to help those suffering from depression through a simple brain scan.

According to Neurologist Helen Mayberg from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, her colleagues looked at 82 people with untreated depression and measured glucose metabolism in their brains using positron emission tomography (PET) scans.

They then randomly assigned participants to various treatment groups, including ones for the common antidepressant drug escitalopram oxalate for up to 12 weeks. Others in the study received 16 sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy over the same period.

Patients with a positive response to the drug but a poor one to cognitive therapy had insula glucose-metabolism levels above the mean levels for the entire brain. For those who responded the opposite way, they had a below-average metabolism levels.

Fifteen of the subjects who did not respond to their assigned treatment went on to receive both the periods over a 12-week period, with results that have not yet been analyzed, according to the study.

The acid test will be to see whether assigning patients to particular treatments on the basis of a PET scan actually improves the current dismal success rates. Mayberg and her colleagues are now planning such a confirmatory trial.

However, many health officials remain skeptical regarding the possibilities.

"I put this study in the category of intriguing but extremely preliminary, and certainly not something that clinicians can begin to use as they're making treatment decisions," said Dr. Daniel Carlat, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts Medical School, who was not involved in the study, via NPR. Carlat believes 10 to 15 years of added research would be necessarily to create any kind of success. 

The findings for the study are published online in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.