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Scientists may have glimpsed what sadness looks like in the brain.
A study of 21 people revealed that, for most respondents, the feeling of discouragement was associated with greater communication between brain areas involved in emotions and memory, said a team from the University. from California to San Francisco, Thursday Cell.
"There was a network that told us again and again whether they felt happy or sad," said Vikaas Sohal, an associate professor of psychiatry at UCSF.
This discovery could lead to a better understanding of mood disorders, or even new methods of treatment.
Previous research had established that sadness and other emotions involved the amygdala, an almond-shaped mass found on either side of the brain. And it was also proved that the hippocampus, associated with memory, could play a role in emotions.
But Sohal and the other researchers were curious to know exactly what these brain areas and others do when the mood changes.
"We really wanted to know, when you feel depressed or happy, exactly what is going on in the brain at those times," says Sohal.
You can not get this information from brain scans, which do not capture the changes that occur in fractions of a second. The team therefore studied 21 hospitalized people waiting for a brain operation for severe epilepsy.
Before surgery, doctors insert tiny wires into the brain and monitor its electrical activity for a week.
Sohal said the team hoped these recordings would help answer a fundamental question: "When patients are sitting, watching TV, talking with family, waiting or are anxious, what brain regions are talking to each other?"
Patients agreed to keep a log of their mood. And the team examined whether certain moods coincided with communication within specific networks in the brain.
The researchers thought that they could find similar networks in a few people. But they were "really surprised" to learn that 13 of the 21 patients shared the same network, says Sohal.
Nevertheless, he says, it makes sense that communication between the areas involved in memory and emotions is associated with sadness. "Maybe you feel depressed and start remembering moments in your life when bad things have happened, or you start remembering those experiences and that's what's depressing you" he says.
The study could not confirm it. It was also not possible to determine if the increase in communication was the result of a change in mood or the cause of a change.
Nevertheless, according to Sohal, this discovery could comfort people with depression.
"As a psychiatrist, it is incredibly powerful to be able to say to patients," Hey, I know something is going on in your brain when you feel depressed. ""
In a sense, the new study only confirms the results of the first animal research, says Dr. Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
"It's about finding a circuit, a part of the brain that we already knew was involved in the mood – it's the least shocking part," he says. "The part wow, it's that it's in the man."
The study also provides a detailed map of what is happening in the human brain. This is what doctors and scientists need to look for better treatments for patients with mood disorders.
"It is very important that we find the circuits underlying the mood in order to learn more about them and to treat them with tools that we develop and that are designed for circuits." These tools include transcranial magnetic stimulation, which uses energy pulses delivered through the skull to alter the activity of the brain circuits.
The study also shows the value of the BRAIN initiative, launched by President Obama in 2013, Gordon said.
"The goals of the BRAIN initiative are to develop tools that we can use to gain unprecedented access to the brain, and an understanding of it," Gordon said. "This study does both."
The research team partly funded the Advanced Defense Research Projects Agency, a strong supporter of the BRAIN initiative.
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AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Scientists seem to have glimpsed what sadness looks like in the brain. According to NPR's Jon Hamilton, there is a distinct pattern of communication between areas of the brain involved in emotions and memory.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: There is a lot of evidence linking sadness and other emotions to a part of the brain called amygdala. But a team of researchers wanted to know precisely what the tonsil and other areas of the brain do when the mood changes. Vikaas Sohal is a psychiatrist from the University of California at San Francisco, who was part of the team.
VIKAAS SOHAL: We really wanted to stick with it, you know, when you feel depressed or happy, you know exactly what's going on in the brain at those times?
HAMILTON: You can not get it through brain scans. They are too slow. The team therefore studied 21 people hospitalized for a brain operation for severe epilepsy. Before surgery, doctors insert tiny wires into the brain and monitor its electrical activity for a week. Sohal said the team hoped that these recordings would help answer a fundamental question.
SOHAL: When patients are sitting, watching TV or talking with their family or waiting or are anxious, you know, what areas of their brains are talking to each other?
HAMILTON: The patients agreed to keep a diary of their moods. Then, the team examined whether certain moods were related to communication within specific networks of the brain. And Sohal says that some of them were.
SOHAL: What really surprised us was that it was the same network in most subjects. So, in about two-thirds of the subjects, there was a network that told us again and again whether they felt happy or sad.
HAMILTON: This network involved communication between the amygdala, which plays a role in emotions, and the hippocampus, which is essential to memory. Signals between these areas became much more intense when people said they felt sad. According to Sohal, the discovery published in the journal Cell could bring comfort to people with depression.
SOHAL: You know, as a psychiatrist, it's incredibly powerful to be able to say to patients, hey, we actually know something is going on in your brain when you feel worse.
HAMILTON: Josh Gordon, who heads the National Institute of Mental Health, said that, in a sense, the study only confirmed previous research on animals.
JOSH GORDON: It's about finding a circuit, a piece of the brain that we already knew was involved in the mood. It's the less than-wow part. The part wow is that it is in the man.
HAMILTON: And he says that he's providing a detailed map of what's going on in the human brain. Gordon says such discoveries should eventually help patients with mood disorders.
GORDON: It's really important to find the circuits that underlie the mood in order to learn more about them and deal with them with the tools that we develop and that are designed for circuits.
HAMILTON: Tools such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, which could one day be used to modify the specific brain circuit causing depression of the patient. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
(SOUND BY DR DRE SONG, "XXPLOSIVE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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