A Diagnosis and Treatment Optimization Study of Depression Based on the Neurological Mechanism of Reward System
Status:
Recruiting
Trial end date:
2022-06-30
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a high-disabling disease. But its etiology and
pathogenesis is not clear, and early recognition, diagnosis and treatment still has many
challenges. Among numerous clinical manifestations of MDD, anhedonia is an important core
symptom of MDD, especially in patients with melancholic features. Our previous studies and
studies abroad have shown that MDD patients had functional abnormality in reward circuit. The
abnormalities of reward-related core areas, such as the prefrontal cortex - nucleus accumbens
- ventral tegmental area were closely associated with the development of MDD, and is an
important neural basis of anhedonia. This study would take the reward circuit as mainline to
carry out the etiology, diagnosis and therapeutic intervention studies of MDD. We would
collect MDD patients with melancholic features and other populations with reward dysfunction.
The neuroimaging techniques, stress assessment, genetic testing and drug intervention methods
would be mainly used in this study. The functional connectivity of reward regions, such as
the ventral striatum, nucleus accumben, and ventral medial prefrontal cortex, would be
analyzed to identify the dysfunction of reward circuit of MDD, and its implication for early
recognition, diagnosis and prediction of treatment efficacy of antidepressants. We would also
investigate the effect of genetic and environmental factors on reward function of MDD and its
biological basis. Finally, through modulating the reward circuit activity using animal
experiments, we would verify and investigate reward dysfunction of MDD and its biological
mechanisms. The project is expected to provide for new evidence for the establishment of
reward mechanism - based objective diagnosis and treatment optimization strategy of MDD.