Interviewer: “What do you wish the public knew about schizophrenia?”
Interviewed: “…we want, in the words of Sigmund Freud, “to love and to work.” There are myths out there that we can’t do this, but they are just that: myths. Mental health professionals should stop immediately telling patient to drastically lower their expectations. With proper resources and proper care, people can live up to their potential.” Elyn Saks, “legal scholar talking about her struggles with […] mental illness.” Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/diary-of-a-high-function/
In order to diagnose psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, professionals depend on clinical symptoms, which sometimes are described subjectively by patients. Furthermore, through a variety of psychiatric illnesses there is an overlapping of symptoms. Current criteria to elucidate a psychiatric condition does not determine its pathology. All these factors together can lead to a late diagnosis or an inappropriate treatment.
By doing a timely precise diagnosis the development of illness and deterioration of life’s patients could be prevented or alleviated. Neuroimaging has been used in research to identify biomarkers such as structural brain abnormalities related to psychiatric disorders.
Lately, research aimed at looking for biomarkers of psychiatric disorders has used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). This non-invasive technology can register the activity of cerebral cortex by measuring its haemo-dynamics. fNIRS is being used to study psychiatric disorders as bipolar disorder, depression, addiction, schizophrenia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, among others. It also showed to be useful to perform a differentiated diagnosis by identifying patients with psychosis disorders.
Although neuroimaging and electrophysiological methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomographic (PET), and electroencephalogram (EEG) have been previously used with this purpose, fNIRS offers some advantages over these technologies. For instance: - it does not require that patient keeps a specific body’s position
- it can be used in combination with other brain imaging technologies, since its light source does not interfere with them
- it is portable
- it has a relatively low cost
- it tolerates slight patient movements
- some models can be used with brain mapping software
One limitation of fMRI is that it cannot detect deep brain’s structures activity. However, it can be used simultaneously with other neuroimaging methods. It also can be used to measure response of the cerebral cortex to cognitive tasks.
There are still many areas of opportunity to potentialize fNIRS’s capacities and uses, for purposes of example: i) to be used as a supplementary diagnostic tool and to monitor treatment outcomes, ii) to better understand brain function related to psychiatric illness by identifying correlated damage brain areas, iii) to develop a database of such correlations for future research’s comparison, and iv) improving hardware structure and algorithms.
For all above fNIRS has an enormous potential in the psychiatric clinical and research fields. References
Lai CY, Ho CSH, Lim ChR et al. (2017) Functional near-infrared spectroscopy in psychiatry. BJPsych Advances. Vol. 23, pp. 324-330. doi: 10.1192/apt.bp.115.015610
Chang F, Li H, Zhang Sh et al. (2020) Research progress of functional near-infrared spectroscopy in patients with psychiatric disorders. Forensic sciences research. https://doi.org/10.1080/20961790.2020.1720901
Wei Y, Chen Q, Curtin A et al. (2020) Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a toll to assist the diagnosis of major psychiatric disorders in a Chinese population. European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-020-01125-y
Related blogs
https://www.brainlatam.com/blog/condicoes-psiquiatricas-e-seu-efeito-na-saude-de-empresarios-1918
https://www.brainlatam.com/blog/the-based-on-evidence-neuroscience-against-the-rise-of-multiple-psychiatric-diagnoses-1525
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