- I mean, this is what gives me hope about the research.
What we have now available is ways to image the brain and see it in action.
Like actually look what's going on as the source of those experiences.
And that's through techniques I use, for example, functional magnetic resonance imaging.
And it means you can image the brain and look at what I call circuits that are regions of brain that talk to each other.
They communicate to with each other.
They govern our very human functions of feeling emotion, regulate emotion, how we think, how we self-reflect, how we worry, all of those things.
But in depression, we can see when they're outside the healthy range.
So you can actually see the activity or the connection of these circuits in the brain.
So it's more like if you are measuring as a rough analogy, blood pressure or an EKG in your heart and you're seeing heart rate too fast or too slow or too regular, we, we are seeing something similar to that.
- So this is this huge difference.
Yes.
From self-reporting to something that you could observe or measure.
Yes.
- And it also, in my view, and what I've seen with many people in our studies is it helps with stigma because we can actually show someone in their brain, we can show them how it's functioning.
You can see, well here's six different circuits in the brain that are involved in depression.
Five of these, you can see how they're all functioning well.
And this one here is functioning outside the healthy range.
And there must be understanding, - So validating.
- There's innocence there too.
If you're see structurally something's wrong, physiologically have a the banner of a diagnosis, then it's not your fault.
- Right, exactly.
- And then does that create the table of treatments where it's like, okay, if you have subtype one, then this will be effective and subtype two.
- Exactly.
So, so far in my research I've characterized eight different types, and I call them biotype because they have this anchor in brain circuits, but they link to what we're experiencing as individuals.
We are now mapping out how that brain circuit will respond, which goes back to your point.
It's not the depression, it's their circuits.
- So once you have biotype, then does it just point directly to a set of treatments that will be way more effective, way sooner than this trial and error thing?
The - Short answer is yes.
What we found in our studies and others have found you can actually double the chances that someone's gonna get better, at least.
And you have the opportunity to find the right treatment sooner.
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