Despite the best efforts of doctors and researchers for decades, we still don’t fully know why some people develop mental disorders and others don’t. However, it is very likely that changes in the brain are our best clues to future mental health outcomes.
The adolescent brain is particularly important in this research, as changes during this period are rapid and dynamic, sculpting our individual uniqueness. In addition, most mental disorders emerge during adolescence, with more than half occurring by age 14 and three-quarters occurring by age 25.
By monitoring and tracking brain changes as they happen, we can address emerging mental health issues in adolescence and target early treatment. The challenge is to accurately predict the likelihood that a person will develop a mental disorder, long before it happens.
We are researchers with the first Longitudinal Adolescent Brain Study (LABS). We have been tracking adolescent brain development using MRI scans for several years. Our recent paper is the first to show how the uniqueness of an adolescent’s brain (or its “brainprint”) can predict mental health outcomes.
Brain imaging could be the future of mental disorder prevention, allowing us to identify signs of concern in teenagers using brain imaging and intervene early before the disease develops.
Read more: Brain activity is as unique and identifying as a fingerprint
Our unique brain in action
Just as fingerprints are unique, each human brain has a unique profile of signals between brain regions that become more individual and specialized as people age.
So far, our study includes 125 participants, ages 12 and up, with more than 500 brain scans between them. Our research captures brain development and mental health in adolescents over five years. It uses quadrimonthly brain imaging (MRI and EEG) and psychological and cognitive assessments.
We looked at each individual’s functional connectome – their brain’s system of neural pathways in action. We found that the uniqueness of these characteristics is significantly associated with new psychological distress that was reported at the time of follow-up examinations four months later. In other words, the level of uniqueness appears to be predictive of a mental health outcome.
MRI scans were performed during a resting state, unlike task-based functional MRI. It still tells us a lot about brain activity, like how the brain keeps connections going or gets ready to do something. You could compare it to a mechanic, listening to an idling engine before driving it.
In the 12-year-olds we studied, we found that unique functional connectomes exist throughout the brain. But a more specific network, involved in the control of goal-directed behavior, is less unique to early adolescence. In other words, this network is still quite similar between different people.
We found that the extent of their uniqueness can predict later-onset symptoms of anxiety and depression. Thus, those with less unique brains had higher levels of distress down the line.
If we can predict the possibility of future psychological distress, we may be able to prevent it. Unsplash/Tim Mossholder, CC BY
Read more: We’ve been tracking young people’s mental health since 2006. COVID has accelerated a worrying decline
Rich knowledge
We suspect that the level of maturation of this brain network, the part that involves executive control or goal-directed behaviors, may provide a biological explanation for why some adolescents are more vulnerable to mental distress. It may be that delays in the “fine-tuning” of these executive function networks lead to increased mental health problems.
By performing brain scans and other assessments at regular intervals, up to 15 times for each participant, LABS not only provides detailed information about adolescent brain development, but can also better identify the onset and onset of disease mental
Our approach allows us to better establish the occurrence and sequence of changes in the brain (and behaviours, lifestyle factors, thinking) and mental health risks and problems.
In addition to unique brain signatures for predicting psychological distress, we hope that there are other ways (using machine learning) to interpret information about a person’s brain. This will bring us closer to accurately predicting their mental health and well-being outcomes. Data-rich studies over a long period of time are the key to finding this “holy grail” of neuroscience.
Identifying mental health risk in adolescents means we can intervene earlier in adulthood, when many mental health disorders take root and are more difficult to resolve.
Our research suggests that the uniqueness of the brain plays a role in adolescent mental health. Unsplash/Jake Ingle, CC BY
Read more: How you can talk to your toddler to safeguard his well-being as he becomes a teenager
is it worth it
This vision for the future of mental health care offers hope following recent statistics from the National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing 2020-21. They revealed that two in five Australians aged 16 to 24 had a mental disorder in the previous year, the highest rate of any age group. This is a 50% increase since the last national survey in 2007.
With A$11 billion invested in mental health-related services in Australia each year, better prevention through early detection should be an urgent priority.