Study finds a common origin for the 6 main psychiatric illnesses

A An unprecedented international investigation examined the brains of more than 12,000 people with attention deficit /hyperactivity, autism, depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia.

“With this discovery we will be able to better understand how diseases are established and evolve so that we can find new ways to treat them. So far what we have done is to try to reduce the symptoms of diseases that are completely established from the brain point of view, that is, we are already late to repair the brain changes that began very early and very early, ”explains Pedro Morgado, coordinator of the Portuguese research team, from ICVS from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Minho.

Also read: What we know so far about the causes of depression.

Adding: “If it is possible to know the brain changes, it is possible to intervene earlier because we know who are the people who have the potential to get sick. objective It is a day that we can prevent the appearance of the main psychiatric illnesses. because we have identified the people who have these brain changes and we have implemented techniques that can reverse them or that can mitigate their pathological expression, that is, the disease is expressed ”.

Pedro Morgado© DR

The work was published this week in JAMA Psychiatry and analyzed the functioning of 34 brain areas, having identified disparities in cortical density, that is, people suffering from the aforementioned psychiatric diseases present a cortex with lower cell density, compared to individuals without any of the pathologies.

The distinction lies in a smaller number of pyramidal neurons. These cells are essential to establish the Excellent communication between different brain areas and that “are involved in the processing of information from the senses, in the control of movements, in the generation of emotions and in the decision-making processes”.

According to academics, the new study allowed Map cerebrally diseases, at the level of the brain region and as a whole, and also in relation to the characteristics of cells in different areas of the brain, recognizing the relationships between genes and cells.

This analysis made it possible to verify that some of the brain alterations occur prematurely, while others appear throughout development due to action of factors psychosocial.

Pedro Morgado says that this is an indicator that “Although the structure of the brain is highly influenced by factors genetic factors, the truth is that this structure is not rigid and can be modulated by life experiences “.

The article has 299 authors from more than 20 countries. The Portuguese team includes researchers Pedro Morgado and Maria Pico-Perez, from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Minho.

Also read: The doctor explains: Living with schizophrenia, the ‘I defragmented‘