Brain-Imaging Scans or Neuroimaging

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Brain-imaging scans or neuroimaging interpret what brain activity/structure can reveal about mental health. Increasingly, newer neuroimaging types can facilitate diagnoses of psychiatric disorders and targeting of new medications. Scans have identified brain changes due to psychotherapy in people with depression, panic disorder, and PTSD — showing such changes as similar to those resulting from medication. Neuroimaging can detect structural lesions causing psychosis and differentiate depression from neurodegenerative disorders or brain tumors. More science research:

• Functional neuroimaging with scans — using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), or single photon emission tomography (SPECT) — helps identify therapy  targets, determine dose of new drugs for targeted brain area, and select participants for clinical trials.

• Quantitative structural imaging, using voxel-based morphometry (VBM),studies brain anatomy—gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid (protects, nourishes, removes impurities from brain and spinal cord)—and structural changes in neurological and psychiatric diseases. VBM assesses patterns of brain atrophy in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.

Imaging endophenotypes combined with imaging genetics is a more recent discovery to measure biomarkers. By relating neural structures to specific genes, imaging genetics is likely to reveal molecular underpinnings of the brain’s organization and function.