Abstract
Major Depression is a syndrom. We can find more than 200 combinations that fullfill diagnostic criteria of Major Depression.
Current guidelines recommend antidepressant therapy for treatment of Major Depression without any biological evaluation of brain activity. Psychiatrists need some tools to puzzle out depressive syndrome and find appropriate treatment for individual patient.
Group analyses of neuroimaging data of patients with Major Depression is not applicable due to its heterogenity. Individualized analyses of neuroimaging data can help to find various neuroimaging phenotypes of Major Depression.
We assessed 10 patients with treatment resistant depressive disorder using resting 18FDG PET and individual-to-group SPM analysis. We found increased metabolism in the cuneus in 8 patients, in the amygdala and the cerebellum in 5 patients.
Decreased metabolism in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex were detected in 7 patients. Individualized PET analyses can be the approach how to find different phenotypes of depressive syndrom.