Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry
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Prog. Neuropsychopharmacol. Biol. Psychiatry · Jan 2012
Meta Analysis Comparative StudyVoxelwise meta-analysis of gray matter reduction in major depressive disorder.
Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) has been widely used in studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and has provided cumulative evidence of gray matter abnormalities in patients relative to controls. Thus we performed a meta-analysis to integrate the reported studies to determine the consistent gray matter alterations in MDD. ⋯ Meta-analysis of all primary VBM studies indicates that significant gray matter reductions in MDD are localized in a distributed neural network which includes frontal, limbic and thalamic regions. Future studies will benefit from the use of a longitudinal approach to examine anatomical and functional abnormalities within this network and their relationship to clinical profile, particularly in first-episode and drug-naive MDD patients.