High-Dimensional Mapping of the Hippocampus in Depression

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Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Abnormalities of the hippocampus may play a role in the pathophysiology of depression, but efforts to identify a structural abnormality in this brain structure among depressed patients have produced mixed results. Previous research may have been limited by exclusive reliance on measures of hippocampal volume. High-dimensional brain mapping is a new analytic method that quantitatively characterizes the shape as well as volume of a brain structure. In this study, high-dimensional brain mapping was used to evaluate hippocampal shape and volume in patients with major depressive disorder and healthy comparison subjects. METHOD: By using magnetic resonance imaging, brain scans were obtained from 27 patients with major depressive disorder and 42 healthy comparison subjects. High-dimensional brain mapping generated a series of 10 variables (components) that represented hippocampal shape, and hippocampal volumes were also computed. Analysis of variance techniques were used to compare depressed patients ...