Neural markers of depression
Main funder
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 12 000,00
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/04/2019
Project end date: 30/09/2019
Summary
Depression has become one of the major causes for disability in our society, but the neural basis of depression is not well understood. Brain responses can potentially be used in the future as biomarkers for diagnosing depression and planning individual treatments. The purpose of the study is to identify neural markers of depression in different age groups including old age.
In the first article, we showed that subgroups of depression could be dissociated with a brief auditory brain response measurement (Ruohonen & Astikainen, 2017). This result can pave way for future development of diagnostic tools. In the second article (Ruohonen, Alhainen & Astikainen, submitted), we demonstrate depression-related bias in facial expression processing that was corrected after a brief therapy intervention and remained corrected in a three year follow-up. These results indicate that alterations in emotional information processing are more a state than trait-like phenomenon. In the third article, the aim is to dissociate depression and aging related neural markers by comparing brain responses between depressed and non-depressed younger and older adults. This is important because cognitive changes related to depression and aging often overlap and the results could aid in developing better diagnostic tools for detecting depression in elderly.
With this grant application, I apply funding for the last 6 months of my PhD work. I have already published one article, submitted the second one, and the third and last manuscript will be submitted for publication in the beginning of 2019. My current funding will cover preparation of the articles, but further funding is needed for preparing the PhD thesis (the roof-report) and revising it according to pre-examiners’ comments.
In the first article, we showed that subgroups of depression could be dissociated with a brief auditory brain response measurement (Ruohonen & Astikainen, 2017). This result can pave way for future development of diagnostic tools. In the second article (Ruohonen, Alhainen & Astikainen, submitted), we demonstrate depression-related bias in facial expression processing that was corrected after a brief therapy intervention and remained corrected in a three year follow-up. These results indicate that alterations in emotional information processing are more a state than trait-like phenomenon. In the third article, the aim is to dissociate depression and aging related neural markers by comparing brain responses between depressed and non-depressed younger and older adults. This is important because cognitive changes related to depression and aging often overlap and the results could aid in developing better diagnostic tools for detecting depression in elderly.
With this grant application, I apply funding for the last 6 months of my PhD work. I have already published one article, submitted the second one, and the third and last manuscript will be submitted for publication in the beginning of 2019. My current funding will cover preparation of the articles, but further funding is needed for preparing the PhD thesis (the roof-report) and revising it according to pre-examiners’ comments.
Principal Investigator
Primary responsible unit
Follow-up groups
Profiling area: Multidisciplinary research on learning and teaching (University of Jyväskylä JYU) MultiLeTe; School of Wellbeing (University of Jyväskylä JYU) JYU.Well
