Major depressive disorder early detection

Abstract

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), one of the most common mental disorders in the world, is a persistent feeling of sadness that leads to physical and cognitive impairment. It is also known as clinical depression or unipolar depression. The condition is plagued by the essence of its symptomatology. The total cases in all countries are growing, thus the aim of this project is to perform morphometric analysis and functional connectivity analysis in order to explore functional associations of the structural and functional changes. The used method starts by applying a seed-based functional connectivity analysis on cortical volume and surface area from MDD patients ‘ high-resolution MRI data. In structural analysis, the regions of interest (ROI) are extracted. Then, each ROI's time series was associated with each cerebral cortex's voxel volume. Compared to healthy controls, statistical analysis showed substantial declines in functional connectivity between the seed region and the bilateral precuneus. As for the functional connectivity analysis, it showed substantial reductions in functional connectivity. Hence, recognizing the pathogenesis of MDD suggested contributing to the production of this disease's effective therapy.