The World Today
MADRID, 18 (EUROPA PRESS)
A team of researchers from the Center for Biomedical Research in Mental Health (CIBERSAM) has led the creation of the first brain atlas that identifies specific gray matter patterns associated with major mental disorders.
The IDIBAPS group, which specializes in the imaging of mood and anxiety disorders, has provided a tool that will allow for a better understanding of the neuroanatomical basis of mental disorders and advance toward better diagnosis and treatment for those affected.
"Having this atlas can help design more precise diagnostic tools and opens the door to a future with more personalized interventions targeted to specific brain regions," said IDIBAPS researcher and first author of the article, Lydia Fortea.
The research, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, combined data from 433 published studies, including data from nearly 20,000 patients and more than 16,000 healthy controls.
One of its main objectives has been to overcome the distortions that arose when analyzing the differences in gray matter between people with mental disorders and healthy individuals precisely because of the existence of different disorders at the same time.
Thus, scientists have developed a new three-dimensional brain imaging meta-analysis technique that simultaneously considers various co-occurring disorders, analyzing disorders such as anorexia nervosa, schizophrenia, anxiety, bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, and borderline personality disorder.
"With this new approach, we have been able to detect more specific and differentiated patterns for each disorder, something that was not possible with traditional methods (...) This validates the value of our method to better understand the correlates of these conditions in the brain," explained Joaquim Raduà, group leader of IDIBAPS, professor of neuroscience at the UB, member of CIBERSAM and project leader.
The study involved more than 40 researchers from leading centers and hospitals in Europe, North America, and Asia, including institutions such as King's College London (United Kingdom), Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), the University of California (United States), and Beijing Normal University (China).
