Brain scans taken at age 10 could predict whether you’ll develop depression as an adult

Depressive disorder affects all ages of life. It concerns approximately 15 to 20% of the French population, over their entire life, according to figures from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm). Regardless of the age at which it manifests, the diagnosis of depressive disorder is based on specific criteria. But depression can also be suspected in the face of warning signs specific to the age group of patients, and can be associated with unusual anxiety, the development of violent behavior or school phobia in children or adolescents.

However, according to a study published in the journal Natureand led by experts at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, the brain shows a difference in its structure as early as age 10 in people at higher risk of developing the disorder. The experts hope that their discovery could serve as the basis for future therapeutic treatments that would address harmful structural differences in the brain.

A part of the brain one third larger

The team looked at brain scans from 141 adults with depression and compared them to those of 37 controls. They found that a set of parts of the brain involved in paying attention to rewards and threats, called the frontostriatal salience network, was larger in those with depression.

The researchers then examined whether this difference in brain structure could be found in children before they developed depression in adolescence. To do this, they examined scans of 57 children aged 10 to 12 who went on to develop depression at age 13 or 14. The authors compared these scans to an equal number of children from the same study who did not develop depression.

They found that the frontostriatal salience network in children who developed depression was about a third larger than in controls.

Markers of depression risk

“These results show that cortical expansion of the salience network is a feature of brain network organization that is stable over weeks, months, and years, unaffected by mood state, and detectable in children before the onset of depressive symptoms in adolescence,” write the authors.

The researchers suggest that brain scans of children could potentially be used as a marker of depression risk in adolescence, but added that further studies were needed to confirm their findings.