Imaging Antidepressant vs. Cognitive Behavior Therapy Effects on Unipolar Depression

Summary

Our goals are 1) to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to predict which depressed individuals will respond to different validated treatments for unipolar depression including Cognitive Therapy (CT) and antidepressant medications (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors; SSRIs) and 2) to understand whether CT and SSRIs affect similar aspects of brain function underlying cognition and emotion. Thus, we will examine depressed adults ages 18-55 using fMRI during cognitive and emotional information processing tasks, before and after treatment with an SSRI (n=25) or CT (n=40). We hypothesize that: 1) Recovery will occur in treatment with an SSRI primarily for individuals with increased reactivity in limbic brain regions associated with emotion generation and prefrontal regions associated with regulation,. 2) Recovery with CT will occur for patients with increased activity in brain regions associated with emotion generation but decreased activity in prefrontal regions associated with emotion regulation. 3) Recovery with an SSRI will yield similar changes in brain function to CT in brain regions associated with emotion generation but less change in brain regions responsible for emotion regulation such as the prefrontal cortex. Findings from this study may have a profound impact on reducing the burden of clinical depression by providing evidenced-based diagnostic and treatment guidelines.

Timeline

Start

2008-06

Primary completion

2011-07

Completion

2011-07

Publications

• Results Siegle GJ, Carter CS, Thase ME. Use of FMRI to predict recovery from unipolar depression with cognitive behavior therapy. Am J Psychiatry. 2006 Apr;163(4):735-8. doi: 10.1176/ajp.2006.163.4.735.
• Results Siegle GJ, Thompson WK, Collier A, Berman SR, Feldmiller J, Thase ME, Friedman ES. Toward clinically useful neuroimaging in depression treatment: prognostic utility of subgenual cingulate activity for determining depression outcome in cognitive therapy across studies, scanners, and patient characteristics. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2012 Sep;69(9):913-24. doi: 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2012.65.
• Results Horner MS, Siegle GJ, Schwartz RM, Price RB, Haggerty AE, Collier A, Friedman ES. C'mon get happy: reduced magnitude and duration of response during a positive-affect induction in depression. Depress Anxiety. 2014 Nov;31(11):952-60. doi: 10.1002/da.22244. Epub 2014 Mar 18.

Drugs

Indications