We can change the brain

The work of Dr. Stephanie Ameis, Associate Director, Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression, Clinician Scientist, Brain Health Imaging Centre, Margaret and Wallace McCain Centre for Child, Youth & Family Mental Health and Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute is a good example of how rapid advancements in knowledge of the brain is changing the course of brain research, with the goal that research findings can be used to guide mental health care.

While most of us are familiar with the term “grey matter” to indicate the physical brain, it is the white matter in the brain that has been the focus of much of Dr. Ameis’ autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research. White matter is made up of bundles of nerve fibers that connect cell bodies across the brain, and enables communication between different brain regions.

It is believed that impairments or differences in that white matter are associated with ASD. With a special focus on the corpus callosum that connects the right and left hemispheres, Dr. Ameis found in a ground-breaking study five years ago that impairments in this region are also associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), brain disorders that were considered until recently to be distinct.

“What we have learned is that there is not just one area of the brain that distinguishes individuals with ASD,” says Dr. Ameis. “There is a lot of overlap with related disorders. Our study in children and youth found that the level of impairment a person experienced in their everyday life (e.g., at school, in social settings) was related to their white matter structure, regardless of what their clinical diagnosis was (ADHD, ASD or OCD).”

This discovery has significant implications for ongoing research and efforts to use brain discovery to inform diagnosis and treatment of all of these disorders, which have until recently been researched separately. “Looking across different mental health diagnoses, we can find brain patterns that are predictive of everyday impairment. In future, we hope to be able to use these patterns to help determine what kind of care an individual may benefit from over the long term. The main dream of my research is that we can bring neuroscience into the clinic to help shape the mental health care we provide at the individual level,” says Dr. Ameis. “We want to develop a personalized treatment plan to bring about a meaningful change in symptoms, distress and functioning for the individual.”

Underlying all of this exciting new research in brain science is the knowledge gained over the past few decades about just how much the brain itself can change with a variety of interventions (e.g., medication, behavioural therapy, brain stimulation), particularly when the brain is actively undergoing development (e.g. in childhood and into young adulthood).

“Interventions can change the brain. They absolutely can,” says Dr. Ameis. “If you learn to play the piano, if you learn to juggle, you are going to change the structure and function of the brain.”