Today's post features a new fMRI study from investigators at Anhui Medical University in China:
Improved and residual functional abnormalities in major depressive disorder after electroconvulsive therapy
Wang J, et al. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry 2020. PMID 32061788
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z5wVmbtNBG6g9DNFlUUZ7V97bdwk8K7e/view?usp=sharing
The authors state that the goal of their study was "to identify the specific circuit for fast remission of depression and circuit for residual functional impairments." Their main finding was increased whole brain functional connectivity homogeneity (FcHo) in the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and left angular gyrus in a group of 23 depressed patients after ECT. What they meant by "residual functional impairments" was not clear to me.
While the specific finding of this study may or may not be accurate or a critical piece of the puzzle, or even hold up to replication, for me, the important take home message is that investigators around the world remain intensely interested in elucidating the mechanism of action of ECT.
Unfortunately, small fMRI studies that rarely get replicated do not often advance the field in a meaningful way. To remedy this problem, the Global ECT-MRI Research Collaboration (GEMRIC) was started in 2017; we look forward to more large-scale studies from that group.
By the way, I think today's paper by Wang et al. may be from the same group (and possibly most of the same patients) whose study "Thalamocortical Connectivity in electroconvulsive therapy for major depressive disorder", Wei Q, et al. J Affect Disord 2020. PMID 32056746, appeared on PubMed a couple of days ago.
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