Progressive Radio Network

Mental Health

DEPRESSION CHANGES GRAY MATTER IN YOUNG BRAIN

The brains of children who suffer clinical depression as preschoolers develop differently than those of preschoolers not affected by the disorder, a new study shows.

These children’s gray matter—tissue that connects brain cells and carries signals between those cells and is involved in seeing, hearing, memory, decision-making, and emotion—is lower in volume and thinner in the cortex, a part of the brain important in the processing of emotions.

“What is noteworthy about these findings is that we are able to see how a life experience—such as an episode of depression—can change the brain’s anatomy,” says first author Joan L. Luby, a professor of child psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis whose earlier research established that children as young as three can experience depression.

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