Nature Communications: Brain Networks Show Less Flexibility in Changing Connections Across Different Psychiatric Diagnoses

The team analyzed data from 219 adults: 134 people with psychiatric diagnoses and 85 with no relevant psychiatric history. The sample included people with depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and other conditions.

Participants underwent functional MRI scans both at rest and while performing tasks involving cognitive control and emotional processing. Six recordings were collected for each participant. Researchers assessed functional connections in the brain by examining coordinated changes in activity across different regions.

On average, the organization of brain networks changed less between recordings in people with psychiatric diagnoses. The authors describe this as a "flattening" of brain dynamics: the brain maintains a more similar configuration even when task demands change.

The scientists also compared the brain scans with 110 clinical, behavioral and cognitive measures. The resulting symptom profiles crossed conventional diagnostic boundaries, suggesting that people with different diagnoses may experience similar combinations of difficulties.

The models were tested using a separate dataset from 43 participants. The findings support further investigation of shared mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders, but they do not yet make it possible to diagnose these conditions using MRI scans. Some diagnostic subgroups were very small, and the relationship between network dynamics and symptoms requires independent verification.