Early Variations in White Matter Microstructure and Depression Outcome in Adolescents With Subthreshold Depression

What is it about?

Neuroimaging studies have found that white matter alterations might be associated with depression in adolescents, but it is unknown whether they predate depression onset. The authors used Diffusion Tensor Imaging in 14 year-old community healthy adolescents, to assess white matter microstructure and compare those with and without subthreshold depression, a condition at-risk for developing major depression in adulthood. They found that adolescents with subthreshold-depression at age 14 exhibited white matter variations in the anterior corpus callosum and its main trajectories to the anterior cingulate cortex. Lower fractional anisotropy in those tracts partly explained the transition to major depression at age 16 and predicted higher individual risk for depression.

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