What Brain Patterns Reveal About Mental Health

Principal investigator: Dr Martijn van den Heuvel

Institution: Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

Location: Netherlands

Research award: Fellows Award

Funding Period: 2016-2019

Can patterns in the brain show the differences between mental health conditions – and speed up diagnosis and treatment?

The project

Many mental health conditions share similar symptoms, which can be a big barrier to quick, accurate diagnosis.

People are left waiting for a condition to be identified or are misdiagnosed. In both cases, the wait for effective treatment can be a long one.

So Martijn and his team are taking a fresh approach to analysing the similarities and differences between mental health conditions.

The aim was to develop a predictive tool that can evaluate the effects of white matter damage on the connectome, with the aim of supporting diagnosis and understanding of brain disorders.

The process

By mapping activity between different areas of the brain in various mental health conditions, Martin and his team of researchers are hoping to identify patterns that are specific to single conditions and others that overlap.

They did this by collecting MRI data from over 3,000 individuals. They then developed a model and online tool to simulate and visualise the effects of white matter lesions on the connectome. This tool is being made open-source and is in beta testing by other labs.

The project involved significant collaboration with clinicians, geneticists, and international partners. There was a strong commitment to open science, with data, tools, and preprints made publicly available. The team also ran a Connectome Summer School to train researchers in these methods.

That new knowledge would help to improve diagnosis, as well as increasing understanding of shared symptoms common to multiple mental health problems.

The outcome

The project found that there is significant overlap in the brain connectivity disruptions (“dysconnectivity”) seen across different brain disorders such as schizophrenia or anxiety disorders. Especially in highly connected, central regions of the brain’s white matter;

They found that each disorder also has a unique “fingerprint” of connectivity changes, but many share a common vulnerable substrate; This challenges the idea of studying brain disorders in isolation, highlighting the value of a cross-disorder approach.

The project identified three main vulnerability factors for these brain regions: high biological cost, centrality in the network, and slow development;

Papers published

de Lange, S.C., Scholtens, L.H., Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. et al. Shared vulnerability for connectome alterations across psychiatric and neurological brain disorders. Nat Hum Behav 2019

The impact

The project has advanced understanding of the shared and unique brain network changes underlying mental illnesses, providing a new framework for future research and biomarker development.

The developed tools could eventually allow clinicians to diagnose mental health conditions directly from MRI scans, potentially reducing diagnosis times and improving accuracy.

Ongoing work aims to refine the framework for understanding brain dysconnectivity, integrate genetic and cellular data, and expand the research to additional disorders and datasets (e.g., UK Biobank).

Dr Martijn van den Heuvel

Dr Martijn van der Heuvel works at the UMC Utrecht Brain Centre Rudolf Magnus in the Netherlands. He focuses on providing new insight into the rules that drive structural and functional brain networks.