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I much enjoyed Helen Mayberg’s October 13th podcast, “Paths to Recovery in Major Depression: Insights from Functional Neuroimaging” hosted by Science & the City, the webzine of the NY Academy of Science. One comment that stuck with me was her mention of ‘brain-based algorithms’ for the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Indeed, from her talk, there are many brain regions involved in the regulation of mood and that individuals who experience depression may show poor activity in any or all of these brain regions. Also, Dr. Mayberg shows that these various brain regions may be more or less responsive to drug- vs. talk-based therapies. This seems like a major step forward in personalized medicine in psychiatry and perhaps might be augmented by other biomarkers. Presently, scanning is somewhat cumbersome relative to current drug-trial-and-error regimens, but the benefits of recovery far, far outweigh the costs of a lifetime of chronic illness.
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