Major scientific discovery reveals that a human brain and its frontostriatal salience network is twice bigger in size in people suffering from depression. Although the exponent role of this part of the brain is not fully understood, it has been previously linked to the roles of screening the information coming from the outside and dealing with rewards.

 This study was carried out by a Weill Cornell Medicine’s team from New York City and the researchers are optimistic that the kind of mechanism discovered in this study could actually be the foundation for future treatments for dementia especially targeting this specific brain network.The researchers stated "We found that the frontostriatal salience network is expanded nearly twofold in the cortex of most individuals with depression.”

Depression
Image Source: Joint Clinical Trials Office - Cornell University

They further added "This effect was replicable in several samples and caused primarily by network border shifts, with three distinct modes of encroachment occurring in different individuals.”

The study suggests that the frontostriatal salience network can move to an area that is relatively reserved for other functional networks. Such border shifts have been observed by the researchers to be inherited genetically in people.The research can be utilized for exact functional mapping which can aid the researchers to have a close look at each of the brains of individuals.

The researchers performed the exploratory analysis for the subject group of 57 participants of an average age of 41 and compared with the healthy controls of 37 patients in the frontostriatal salience network expansion.The same tests were also conducted on a smaller group in a year and a half, and brain image data from 114 children designated with depression before and after depression was identified were also similar. The researchers said "Salience network expansion was stable over time, unaffected by mood state, and detectable in children before the onset of depression later in adolescence.”

It was also evident that the expansion of the frontostriatal salience network was present in the kids before they developed depression and these findings pointed to the hypothesis that the frontostriatal salience network was both a cause of and a risk factor for depression.They researchers mentioned in the paper "These findings identify a trait-like brain network topology that may confer risk for depression and mood-state-dependent connectivity changes in frontostriatal circuits that predict the emergence and remission of depressive symptoms over time.”

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