Scientists tell new facts about depression
Scientists have brought new arguments in support of the hypothesis that individuals with depression tend to be more active in neural systems accountable for ideas about their and themselves group of friends. The findings from the study are printed around the pages from the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Based on gazeta.ru, scientists stated that the major despression symptoms or depression is among the most serious and customary mental disorders. Regardless of this, little is famous concerning the physiological reasons for depression, since people are very heterogeneous and disorders affect many mental processes: from motivation and feelings to thinking. It’s not easy to attract a line together during experimental measurements of numerous parameters within the brain. For instance, evaluating the prosperity of tasks on attentiveness and knowledge processing by healthy people and individuals with despression symptoms, you must know that patients with impairments are capable of doing tasks worse due to reduced motivation, and never simply because they have grown to be inattentive.
Now there’s this type of direction in study regarding the mind – study regarding connections between various areas of the mind – connectivity – resting,? states lead author Gennady Knyazev, chief research researcher in the Research Institute of Physiology and Fundamental Medicine, Siberian Branch from the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. – Such research has permitted to spread out systems of sleep – interconnected regions of the mind that form just one network and demonstrate related activity, even if an individual doesn’t perform any tasks. One of these is known as the default-system it’s associated with ideas about yourself, about close people, and social atmosphere. It’s most active when one is not involved in any action.
Not such a long time ago, a hypothesis was created in science that in depression this technique is excessively active. What this means is that an individual is fixated by himself problems, and that he sees his position as hopeless and presents his image within the eyes of others, always within the most negative colors. This type of repetition of the identical obsessive ideas is known as rumination (in the British. Rumination – chewing?). Simultaneously, connections in task-positive systems, systems that handle performing tasks associated with the outdoors world and processing information, are weakening.
These data happen to be confirmed by research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). But fMRI doesn’t appraise the very activity of neurons, which should be registered, however the saturation of bloodstream in specific regions of the mind with oxygen.
In general, the oxygen level correlates with this particular, however, many additional factors influence the fMRI parameters, for instance, the particularities from the heart, explains Gennady Knyazev.
Additionally, the effectiveness of the connections within each system was mainly examined, and also the localization from the aftereffect of the dominance from the default-system within the task-positive systems within the brain wasn’t described.
Therefore, they made the decision to check exactly the same hypothesis while using second method – electroencephalography (EEG). Within this situation, while using connected electrodes, the electromagnetic activity of various regions of the mind is investigated. Scientists employed two categories of patients – healthy and struggling with depression. The brains of both were examined resting by methods.
The technique of electroencephalography includes a drawback: electrical activity is documented on the top of mind, and sophisticated mathematical calculations can be used to acquire details about brain activity. The benefit of EEG is really a high temporal resolution, similar to the dynamics of cognitive processes. The outcomes acquired from each number of patients were compared by two methods. The overall concept that in depressed patients the default-product is more active than task-positive systems is proven. Each method localized the result of “dominance” within the anterior parts of the left hemisphere, whose reference to the genesis of depression was formerly proven (see figure).
This hypothesis is gaining momentum, and sooner or later clinicians can adopt it to be able to better learn how to use such patients: for instance, that using cognitive-behavior therapy methods they should be more oriented towards the outdoors world, concludes researcher.
