The neural basis of treatment-induced remission in depression: an fMRI and pharmacoMRI study

我们正在试图找出为什么一些抑郁症患者在接受抗抑郁药物治疗时会好转，为什么有些人没有改善。了解这一点将使我们能够更好地将患者与对他们有效的治疗相匹配，并设计更好的治疗方法。我们理解中的一个主要差距是，像抑郁症这样的情绪障碍是如何由于大脑工作中的物理变化而引起的，以及药物治疗如何对大脑起作用以改善情绪。这项研究将有助于弥合这一差距，方法是使用大脑成像来识别大脑处理抑郁情绪线索的异常，并可视化大脑中一种关键化学物质--血清素的工作原理，我们知道这种化学物质与情绪和抑郁症有关。我们将对抑郁症患者进行测试，以找出他们的大脑对情绪暗示的反应是如何改变的，并使用一项新技术，了解大脑中负责情绪的部分的5-羟色胺系统是如何工作的。在接受抗抑郁药物治疗后，我们将再次对他们进行测试，以找出他们的改善与情绪处理变化之间的联系，以及是什么预测了谁会对抗抑郁药物做出反应。

We are trying to find out why some people with depression get better when treated with antidepressant drugs and why some fail to improve. Understanding this will allow us to be better able to match people with treatments that work for them, and to design better treatments. A major gap in our understanding is how an emotional disorder like depression can be due to physical changes in the working of the brain, and how drug treatments can work on the brain to improve feelingsThis research will help to bridge the gap by using brain imaging to identify abnormalities in the way the brain processes emotional cues in depression together with visualising the working of a key brain chemical, serotonin, that we know is involved in mood and depression. We will test people with depression to find out how their brains’ reaction to emotional cues is altered and, using a new technique, how the serotonin system is working in parts of the brain that are responsible for emotion. Following treatment with an antidepressant we will test them again to find out how their improvement is linked to changes in emotional processing, and what predicts who will respond to the antidepressant.