Global initiative to map brain function across eight psychiatric disorders

Researchers from the Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute at the Keck School of Medicine of USC are launching a worldwide effort to map how eight common psychiatric disorders affect brain function. Supported by a five-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the Global Initiative for Harmonized Functional MRI in Psychiatry will analyze over 94,000 brain scans.

The study involves 257 research sites across 27 countries and includes participants aged 4 to 95. The research covers schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, and anorexia nervosa.

By utilizing resting-state functional MRI to track blood oxygen shifts, the project aims to standardize how scans are processed globally. This harmonization is intended to help scientists identify shared brain abnormalities across different disorders and discover specific brain signatures to better target treatments and predict patient responses.