MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging 2016

focus on clinical applications Probing The Underlying Biology Of Mental Illness For the first time, researchers are applying state-of-the-art ‘connectome’ imaging to a specific disease population Anxiety disorders and depression are widespread among adolescents in the U.S., affecting as many as one in four 13 to 18 year olds. Determining the best course of treatment can be difficult, though, as we still don’t fully understand the biology of the disorders. by mapping the brain signatures of depression and anxiety disorders at an age that is critical for brain development, we can discover reliable biomarkers that will allow doctors to perform accurate diagnoses and prescribe appropriate treatments for patients.” A study begun in late 2015 could offer new insights into the underlying biology, and thus help to improve the ways in which we approach anxiety and depression. The study is among the first round of projects funded by the National Institutes of Health to study a disease population using HCP data collection protocols. The investigators will collect brain imaging and clinical data from adolescents with depression or anxiety disorders, and they will combine it with data obtained from healthy adolescents by collaborators at the University of Washington in St. Louis. The goal is to gain insights into how subtle differences in brain connections can To this end, the study is taking adpredict outcomes of anxiety and de- vantage of cutting-edge MRI inpression in adolescence. strumentation found in the Martinos Center. This includes MRI at “Previous imaging studies have both ultra-high gradient strength given researchers clues for the ways (the unique Connectom 3T and the in which the brain is wired dif- commercially available Prisma 3T) ferently in psychiatric disorders,” and ultra-high field strength (7T). Yendiki said. “By leveraging the No other group has access to such unprecedented data quality of the an array of advanced technology, HCP protocols, we hope to study Yendiki said. Not only is the Martithe differences between the healthy nos Center the only place where all and diseased brain in much greater of these resources exist under one detail than has been possible in the roof, it is also where many of the inpast.” novations behind them were—and continue to be—developed. The Human Connectome Project (HCP)—a multi-institutional collaboration including the MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and others—has demonstrated since its launch in 2010 an extraordinary ability to map the neural pathways in the healthy human brain. Now, a team at the MGH Martinos Center and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT is using the techniques developed by the HCP to probe a particular disease. “Our understanding of the biological mechanisms of mental illness is still limited. This makes it very challenging to predict which treatment will work for which patient,” said Anastasia Yendiki, an Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and principal investigator of the Martinos Center site of the project. “We hope that, The project is based at MIT, with the McGovern Institute’s Sue Whitfield-Gabrieli and John Gabrieli serving as its principal investigators. Adolescents with depression and / or anxiety disorders are being recruited at three different clinical sites—Boston University, McLean Hospital and MGH—and scanned at the Martinos Center, using HCP protocols. The brain scans will be analyzed to reveal functional and structural connections in the brain, leveraging algorithms that have been developed, respectively, by Whitfield-Gabrieli and Yendiki. By measuring these connections both in healthy subjects and in patients, the researchers hope to determine how they can predict psychiatric disease progression.

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