Changes in brain network properties in major depressive disorder following electroconvulsive therapy: a combined static and dynamic functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

BACKGROUND

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common and intractable mood disorder. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a common means of brain electrical stimulation for the treatment of MDD, but the neurobiological mechanism of its clinical symptom relief effect is still to be explored. This study aims to explore how ECT plays a role in depression remissions by investigating the changes of static and dynamic brain network characteristics in MDD patients before and after ECT.

METHODS

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were obtained from nine MDD patients twice before and after a full course of ECT, all of whom responded to ECT as defined by at least a 50% reduction from baseline Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD) scores. Both static and dynamic characteristics of the functional brain network were compared between the pre- and post-ECT scans for all participants, and the correlations between changes in clinical symptoms and altered network metrics were also investigated.

RESULTS

The clustering coefficient and local efficiency in static brain networks were increased significantly, while the global flexibility of dynamic brain networks was decreased significantly after ECT. Several regions of interest (ROIs) that changed significantly at the local level were also identified, which involved regions of the cerebellum, hippocampus as well as frontal and temporal cortices. Although not significant, the decrease of HAMD scores were associated with trends of changed network metrics after ECT.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results suggest that ECT may alleviate the depressive symptoms of MDD by decreasing the randomness of the brain network as reflected by changes in both static and dynamic network properties and that the temporal gyrus, frontal gyrus, hippocampus, and cerebellar regions may play key roles in such mechanisms. These findings have important implications for our understandings of ECT and depression. However, this study is limited by a relatively small sample size and the results should be confirmed in larger samples.