Electric field causes volumetric changes in the human brain
- The Zucker Hillside Hospital, United States
- University of Bergen, Norway
- National Institute of Mental Health, United States
- University of California, Los Angeles, United States
- The City College of the City University of New York, United States
- University of California, San Diego, United States
- Bellvitge University Hospital-IDIBELL, Spain
- University of Muenster, Germany
- GGZinGeest, Old Age Psychiatry, Amsterdam Neuroscience, Netherlands
- Keio University School of Medicine, Japan
- University Psychiatric Center - KU Leuven, Belgium
- Carlos III Health Institute, Spain
- Radboud University Medical Center, Netherlands
- University of New Mexico School of Medicine, United States
Abstract
Recent longitudinal neuroimaging studies in patients with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) suggest local effects of electric stimulation (lateralized) occur in tandem with global seizure activity (generalized). We used electric field (EF) modeling in 151 ECT treated patients with depression to determine the regional relationships between EF, unbiased longitudinal volume change, and antidepressant response across 85 brain regions. The majority of regional volumes increased significantly, and volumetric changes correlated with regional electric field (t =3.77, df = 83, r = 0.38, p = 0.0003). After controlling for nuisance variables (age, treatment number, and study site), we identified two regions (left amygdala and left hippocampus) with a strong relationship between EF and volume change (FDR corrected p<0.01). However, neither structural volume changes nor electric field was associated with antidepressant response. In summary, we showed that high electrical fields are strongly associated with robust volume changes in a dose-dependent fashion.
Data availability
Source data files (.csv) including processed data have been provided for Figures 1-4, Figure 3-figure supplement 1 and Figure 4-figure supplement 1. Raw data cannot be made available publicly because we do not have consent or ethical approval for this and the data cannot be anonymised. The data is stored on a secure centralized server at the Univerity of Bergen, Norway. Participating GEMRIC sites have access to the raw data according to specific data policy and safety rules of the consortium, and in accord with the approval from the ethical committee. The GEMRIC consortium welcomes new members who are interested in the neuroimaging research of ECT. We hold board meetings twice a year when new members can apply to join and gain access to the database available on the GEMRIC servers. For more about the application process please visit https://mmiv.no/how-to-join-gemric/ or write to Leif Oltedal (leif.oltedal@uib.no). General information about the consortium can be found on the following website: https://mmiv.no/gemric/. For transparency and reproducibility, the entire analytical approach is uploaded to the https://github.com/argyelan/Publications/tree/master/ECTEFvsVOLUME (R scripts in org mode), and also was uploaded to eLife.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of Mental Health (MH092301)
- Randall Espinoza
- Katherine L Narr
National Institute of Mental Health (ZIAMH00295)
- Zhi-De Deng
National Institute of Mental Health (MH119616)
- Miklos Argyelan
National Institute of Mental Health (MH111826)
- Christopher Abbott
National Institute of Mental Health (MH110008)
- Randall Espinoza
- Katherine L Narr
National Institute of Mental Health (MH102743)
- Randall Espinoza
- Katherine L Narr
Western Norway Regional Health Authority (911986)
- Ketil J Oedegaard
Western Norway Regional Health Authority (912238)
- Leif Oltedal
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG FOR2107 DA1151/5-1 and DA1151/5-2)
- Udo Dannlowski
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB-TRR58)
- Udo Dannlowski
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Projects C09 and Z02)
- Udo Dannlowski
Innovative Medical Research (RE111604 and RE111722)
- Ronny Redlich
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: All sites' contributing data received approval by their local ethical committees or institutional review board, and the centralized mega-analysis was approved by the Regional Ethics Committee South-East in Norway (2013/1032 ECT and Neuroradiology, June 1, 2015).
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
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