Decoding Depression Severity From Intracranial Neural Activity

Background: Disorders of mood and cognition are prevalent, disabling, and notoriously difficult to treat. Fueling this challenge in treatment is a significant gap in our understanding of their neurophysiological basis.

Methods: We recorded high-density neural activity from intracranial electrodes implanted in depression-relevant prefrontal cortical regions in 3 human subjects with severe depression. Neural recordings were labeled with depression severity scores across a wide dynamic range using an adaptive assessment that allowed sampling with a temporal frequency greater than that possible with typical rating scales. We modeled these data using regularized regression techniques with region selection to decode depression severity from the prefrontal recordings.

Results: Across prefrontal regions, we found that reduced depression severity is associated with decreased low-frequency neural activity and increased high-frequency activity. When constraining our model to decode using a single region, spectral changes in the anterior cingulate cortex best predicted depression severity in all 3 subjects. Relaxing this constraint revealed unique, individual-specific sets of spatiospectral features predictive of symptom severity, reflecting the heterogeneous nature of depression.

Conclusions: The ability to decode depression severity from neural activity increases our fundamental understanding of how depression manifests in the human brain and provides a target neural signature for personalized neuromodulation therapies.