Fei Wang, M.D., Ph.D.

Fellow in Child & Adolescent Depression

Project Details

Project title

The Neural Circuitry of Adolescent Major Depressive Disorder: A Multi-modality Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Project Summary

Major depressive disorder (MDD) in youth is a public health crisis. Identification of brain changes in adolescents with MDD could be critical to understanding mechanisms underlying its development, and contribute to new methods of detection, treatment and prevention. Ventral prefrontal cortex (VPFC) and amygdala play key roles in the emotional processes disrupted in MDD. The proposed study will use two magnetic resonance imaging techniques, diffusion tensor imaging and functional connectivity methods, to investigate the structural and functional connectivity between the VPFC and amygdala in adolescents with MDD. Our preliminary data in adolescents with MDD support the presence of abnormalities in VPFC-amygdala structural and functional connectivity. Moreover, we identified an association between the structural and functional connectivity abnormalities, providing the first evidence that white matter structural abnormalities may contribute to disrupted VPFC-amygdala functional connectivity in adolescents with MDD. The proposed study would provide the opportunity to investigate the white-grey matter structure-function interactions in the developmental pathophysiology of MDD. Identification of abnormalities within the connections of the circuitry could provide new avenues for development of new detection and early intervention strategies for MDD.

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