文章基本信息

标题：A new vista in psychiatric treatment: Using individualized functional connectivity to track symptoms
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作者：Joseph E. LeDoux ; Hakwan Lau
期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2020
卷号：117
期号：9
页码：4450-4452
DOI：10.1073/pnas.2000934117
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：In PNAS, Sylvester et al. (1) assess the functional connectivity of the human amygdala with well-established brain networks using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This focus on the amygdala was chosen because this region has been often implicated in psychiatric conditions. Better understanding of its connectivity and functions may therefore be helpful as the field moves in the direction of individualized treatments for psychiatric problems. The amygdala was first identified in the early 19th century when the German anatomist, Karl Friedrich Burdach, came across an almond-shaped structure in the human brain and named it using a word derived from the Greek word for almond (2). A century later, the term amygdala had come to designate a larger area in which the almond-shaped region was only a component. Today, the amygdala is recognized to have more than 12 anatomical areas, or nuclei, each with several subdivisions and unique patterns of connectivity in the brain (3, 4). These are sometimes grouped into three partitions: basolateral, centromedial, and cortical (5). Despite the singular designation, the amygdala, like all brain areas, is a twin structure, with one amygdala in each cerebral hemisphere. From a comparative perspective, the amygdala is a common feature of the vertebrate brain, although it is considerably more developed in mammals than in other vertebrates (6). When discussing brain areas, it is important to recognize that the criteria used in their initial characterization, often in the 19th century, were relatively crude. Consequently, with modern methods the boundaries of areas often shift, and sometimes what seemed like two areas may turn out to be a continuous one, leading to debates about what to call the area. Some, for example, question the existence of the amygdala as an independent region, arguing it is a subregion of the striatum (2).