Sue Whitfield-Gabrieli

Sponsor: NIH

Targeting adolescent depression symptoms using network-based real-time fMRI neurofeedback and mindfulness meditation

Adolescents experience alarmingly high rates of major depressive disorder (MDD), and these episodes are highly recurrent and increase suicide risk. Recently, the U.S. Surgeon General and leading pediatric health organizations declared a national state of emergency for adolescent mental health, underscoring that the majority of affected adolescents do not receive adequate treatment. As gold-standard depression treatments (antidepressant medications and cognitive behavioral therapy) are effective for only ~50% of adolescents, there is a critical need to develop novel treatments to improve clinical outcomes, particularly those that target core mechanisms fundamental to MDD.  Rumination (i.e., repetitive, negative patterns of thinking typically focused on the self) contributes to MDD onset, maintenance, and recurrence as well as predicts treatment non-response and relapse. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to suppress the default mode network (DMN), a set of brain regions that are overactive in depression and that underlie rumination.   We are launching a large scale, clinical trial to do a mindfulness based real-time fMRI neurofeedback intervention in adolescents with MDD in order to quiet the DMN and mitigate rumination.