Brain Correlates of Antidepressant Treatment Outcome from Neuroimaging Studies in Depression

The ultimate goal of psychiatric research in major depressive disorder, including postmortem and neuroimaging studies, is better diagnosis and treatment of afflicted individuals.A growing number of neuroimaging studies have focused on correlates of treatment response. This article reviews findings from psychiatric research involving subjects who have major depression. It then discusses general issues involved in conducting neuroimaging studies that seek to identify correlates of treatment response. It concludes with a review of neuroimaging studies of treatment response in depression and integrates these findings into current models regarding the pathophysiology of major depression.