e-Article
Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Popular Targets for Deep Brain Stimulation in the Treatment of Major Depression: An Application of a Graph Theory
Document Type
Conference
Source
2019 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2019 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE. :4334-4337 Jul, 2019
Subject
Language
ISSN
1558-4615
Abstract
We examined the functional connectivity of subcallosal cingulate gyrus (SCG), nucleus accumbens (NAc), and ventral caudate (VCa), the main target areas for the treatment of major depression disorder (MDD), using deep brain stimulation (DBS). MDD is one of the most common diseases in the world, and approximately 30% of MDD patients do not respond to common therapies, including psychotherapy and antidepressant medications. Alternatively, DBS has been recently used to treat MDD. Resting state fMRI was obtained from seventeen healthy subjects and seven MDD patients. The functional connectivity network of the brain was constructed for all subjects and measured by the ‘degree’ value for each SCG, NAc, and VCa regions using the graph theory analysis. The results show that the degree values of VCa and the left SCG are higher in the MDD group than the healthy group. Furthermore, the patterns of the degree values were different for the right and left hemispheres in MDD patients. Our findings suggest that degree values and their patterns have a potential to be used as diagnosis tools to detect the brain areas with abnormal functional connectivity.