Pei-Chin Chen1, Kun-Hsien Chou2, I-Yun Chen3, Hsuan-Hui Wang1, Cheng-Ta Li4, Tung-Ping Su4, Ching-Po Lin1,3
1Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Radiological Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; 2Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; 3Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; 4Department of Psychiatry, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a chronic and deteriorating disease. Without sufficient treatment to achieve fully remission, residual symptoms of depression would lead to poorer outcome and more brain structure deficit. We use Voxel-Based Morphometry to clarify whether any structure differences among remitted/non-remitted MDD and healthy subjects. Our results showed remitted patients reduced GMV in left postcentral parietal gyrus and bilateral frontal gyrus compared to normal. Non-remitted patients showed more structural abnormalities, including reduced GMV over the left prefrontal and frontal cortex, right temporal, occipital cuneus. Our findings indicated remitted patients were morphologically closer to normal people whereas non-remitted ones were not.