Click click! Brain selfie!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Diagnosing mental health disorders takes a VILLAGE of experts and medical tests. Despite progress, diagnoses are still taken with a BRAIN of salt. How can we do better?
Enter Spencer Kinsey and team from Georgia State University. They want to improve brain scans. The key? Imaging the INDIRECT connections between brain regions. Imagine the brain like a puzzle; distant connections are imaged – several puzzle pieces apart! Each piece is part of the bigger picture!
Kinsey compared brain scans from over five hundred participants with or without schizophrenia. And? MULTIPLE information-processing brain regions showed connectivity changes associated with schizophrenia! These overlooked indirect connections could improve testing accuracy!
Better diagnoses are just a snapshot away! Click click!
Reference: Kinsey, S., Kazimierczak, K., Camazón, P.A. et al. Networks extracted from nonlinear fMRI connectivity exhibit unique spatial variation and enhanced sensitivity to differences between individuals with schizophrenia and controls. Nat. Mental Health 2, 1464–1475 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00341-y