Depression Risk identified by Brain Differences
A new research study has been published about depression and its’ connection to the make-up of the brain. Apparently, if you have a high family risk of developing depression, you may have less brain matter on the right side of your brain. This is on par with losses seen in Alzheimer’s disease.
When compared with people who did not have a family history of depression, brain scans showed a 28-percent thinning in the right cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain.
The doctors responsible for the research almost didn’t believe it, and they checked and re-checked all of the data. The same circumstances occurred every time. They did imaging studies on 131 people between the ages of six and 54, and included people with and without a family history of depression.
Thinning on the right side of the brain was only linked, however, to a family predisposition to depression. Those who actually were depressed had thinning on both sides of the brain.
The study was conducted by Dr. Bradley Peterson of Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. His study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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