Widespread Increased White Matter Connectivity in Major Depression: A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study

摘要

It has been reported that depressed patients show significant differences in white matter (VVM) compared with controls. However, little attention has been paid on the differences of WM fiber bundles between patients and controls. In this paper, we investigate the WM fiber tracts between 90 brain regions using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography in 22 depressed patients and 26 controls. A machine learning-based approach was applied to categorize subjects using the connections between each pair of brain regions, with the most discriminative features were selected to represent the differences between two groups. Results showed a classification rate of 89.58% and the selected connections with significant differences revealed widespread increased connectivity in depressed patients. These findings suggested that WM connectivity could be a potential biomarker for major depressive disorder (MDD).