Editorial for “Altered MRI Diffusion Properties of the White Matter Tracts Connecting Frontal and Thalamic Brain Regions in First‐Episode, Drug‐Naïve Patients with Postpartum Depression”
Abstract
The lifetime prevalence of mental disorders worldwide has been estimated to be one in three individuals. For women, the prevalence of psychiatric disorders is elevated in the first three postpartum months. The incidence postpartum depression (PPD) has been estimated to be as high as nearly one in five women. Understanding how peripartum mood disorders, as well as other mental disorders, develop in terms of brain structures, function, and metabolism may be helpful in improving diagnosis, classification, and treatment. Imaging will likely have an important role in achieving this goal, as there is increasing evidence that quantitative MRI can detect differences between the brains of healthy controls and patients with mental disorders even when not obvious by visual inspection of the images. For example, surface-base morphometry has identified cortical alterations, predominantly in the prefrontal and parietal regions, in patients with PPD compared to healthy controls. Results from resting state functional MRI suggest disrupted or abnormal functional connectivity between the posterior cingulate gyrus and amygdala in patients with PPD. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has also been applied to assess white matter microstructure. For example, Silver et al observed decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) in the anterior limb of the left internal capsule in patients with PPD. The absence of significant translation of these methodologies into clinical practice is secondary to multiple…
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