The brain, though powerful, is also subject to disruption from injury, chemical imbalances, and even traumatic events. There is substantial evidence that dysfunctional brain networks are associated with psychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia, and that these dysfunctional networks lead to the presentation of symptoms in individuals. A growing body of research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is working to analyze individuals and dysfunctional brain networks in order to hopefully add this neuroimaging technique to the list of tools used in psychiatric settings for diagnosis and treatment.
This also extends to trauma and how it disrupts brain networks, causing symptoms such as dissociative experiences as a method of coping. Lebois et al. (2020) investigated if trauma-related dissociation could be estimated using a brain-based measure of large-scale functional brain network connectivity. Participants completed the Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and underwent resting-state and task-based fMRI. Researchers trained support vector machine for regression (SVR) models and found that they were able to predict severe dissociative symptom scores above chance levels. Ultimately, their results suggest that network connectivity could be used as an objective, unbiased estimate of trauma-related dissociative symptom severity in an individual. They also suggest that symptom-related and between-network connectivity are better predicted by subject-specific functional regions, not by group-level regions. These findings could contribute to a functional connectivity fingerprint that identifies dissociation from trauma.
However, fMRI is not at clinically useful levels at an individual level. Gratton et al. (2019) reviewed the usage of precision fMRI (pfMRI) as a more reliable, stable, and sensitive data collection alternative to functional connectivity (FC) MRI. FC MRI is often unreliable in showing specific and individual differences. On the other hand, pfMRI is reliable in this regard, since a large amount of fMRI data is collected and analyzed from each individual in conjunction with behavioral and phenotypic measurements. Researchers also found that pfMRI is more stable across contexts and time scales, and is also very sensitive to individual differences rather than common task effects across a group. Findings also suggested that pfMRI has established early convergent evidence confirming a relationship between behavioral variation and individual differences in the form of network variants. Thus, pfMRI can provide a more individualized treatment plan based on subject-specific target areas.
Using fMRI as an objective clinical tool to identify dysfunctional brain networks associated with symptoms of psychiatric disorders has gained popularity in recent years. While fMRI offers group comparisons and has validated functional connectivity networks, pfMRI has more sensitivity towards individual differences. Although research offers conflicting results and differing approaches, every study has the same ultimate goal of increasing quality of care for every patient struggling with a psychiatric disorder.
References
Gratton, C., Kraus, B. T., Greene, D. J., Gordon, E. M., Laumann, T. O., Nelson, S. M., Dosenbach, N. U. F., & Petersen, S. E. (2020). Defining individual-specific functional neuroanatomy for precision psychiatry. Biological Psychiatry, 88(1), 28–39. https://doi-org.flagship.luc.edu/10.1016/j.biopsych.2019.10.026
Lebois, L. A. M., Li, M., Baker, J. T., Wolff, J. D., Wang, D., Lambros, A. M., Grinspoon, E., Winternitz, S., Ren, J., Gönenç, A., Gruber, S. A., Ressler, K. J., Liu, H., & Kaufman, M. L. (2021). Large-Scale functional brain network architecture changes associated with trauma-related dissociation. American Journal of Psychiatry, 178(2), 165–173. https://doi-org.flagship.luc.edu/10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.19060647
McLean Hospital. (2020, September 25). Novel neuroimaging study on dissociative symptoms reveals wounds of childhood trauma: Researchers have found connections in the brain to dissociative symptoms. ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200925113449.htm
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