Depressed Adolescents’ Brain Avoids Distressing Information

A new study provides a clue in how we measure the functioning of the adolescent brain. The adolescent brain is highly adaptive and so early antidepressant interventions can prevent further damage.

Scientists have measured brain activity in young people with and without depression and found that the brains of depressed adolescents give a muted reaction to distressing images. This research work is presented at the ECNP conference in Lisbon.

Researchers from the University of Oxford, compared the brain activity of 29 depressed adolescents with that of 16 healthy adolescents, aged 13 to 18.

Adolescent Depression - Causes - Affects - Depressed Teens - Treatment - FAQs
Adolescent depression is an ailment that occurs during the teenage characterized by persistent melancholy, disappointment and loss of self-esteem.

‘The depressed adolescent brain avoids information that could further aggravate the depression.’

They found that when depressed adolescents were shown a series of photos of distressing images depicting scenarios such as someone crying, someone visibly hurt, someone being attacked, there was reduced brain activity in fMRI brain scan, (compared to non-depressed adolescents).

The activity was mainly reduced in brain areas such as the occipital pole (which processes visual information, found at the rear of the brain) and the fusiform gyrus (which is involved in the processing of faces, body, and colors, found near the brain stem and cerebellum).

This finding reflects a form of “emotional numbness”, where depressed adolescents shut down their emotions and do not feel “involved” in what’s happening around them, or even reflect difficulties with taking another person’s perspective, as the images showed distressing situations that were happening to others.

Antipsychotic Medications - Types, Side Effects and Precautionary Measures
Antipsychotics are the class of drugs which help in treating mental disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and other stress related psychosis symptoms.

This effect has not been found in previous work using the same distressing images in adults with depression, which could imply that there are potential vulnerabilities in the brains of depressed adolescents which are not found in the brains of depressed adults.

Later, the 29 depressed adolescents were given either the antidepressant fluoxetine or a placebo. After a single 10mg dose (a normal starting dose) of fluoxetine, brain activity in depressed adolescents was found to increase to the same level as that of healthy adolescents.

Childhood Adversity Linked to Adolescent Violence and Depression
A cluster of traumatic childhood experiences known as ACEs, or adverse childhood experiences, work together to cause specific health issues in early adolescence with terrible, life-long consequences.

This could imply that this medication reduces the brain’s avoidance of experiencing these distressing images in very early treatment.

This effect could help these depressed adolescents approach problems that arise in everyday life, by helping them cope with the distressing experience. However, this is just a working hypothesis and needs to be confirmed in larger studies.

Adolescent Depression Urgently Demands More Potent Treatments
In the U.S. 200 million teenagers suffer from depression. Current drug warnings and study results have raised controversy concerning the treatment of adolescent depression.

Source-Medindia