{"slug": "baseline-brain-scan-predicts-adolescent-depression-and-anxiety-one-year-later", "title": "Baseline brain scan predicts adolescent depression and anxiety one year later", "summary": "A single resting-state functional MRI scan can predict depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents one year later, according to a study of 150 participants. The predictive marker, derived from a whole-brain generative model, achieved a correlation of r=0.60, outperforming traditional functional connectivity measures. The findings offer a potential early warning system for mental health disorders.", "body_md": "## Abstract\n\nMood and anxiety disorders emerge predominantly in adolescence, yet they are usually identified only once symptoms have consolidated, when intervention can only be reactive. A marker that registers the loss of healthy brain function before symptoms crystallise would allow earlier and more targeted treatment, much as caged canaries once warned miners of danger before it became apparent. Here we report such a marker using a single baseline resting-state functional MRI scan in 150 adolescents in the Human Connectome Project Boston Adolescent Neuroimaging of Depression and Anxiety (HCP BANDA) cohort, allowing us to prospectively predict depression and anxiety symptoms one year later in held-out participants at r = 0.60, substantially above the effect-size ceiling reported for functional connectivity in the same data. The marker is not computed from raw functional connectivity but read out from a whole-brain generative model fitted to each individual’s dynamics, which gives access to interference structure that covariance-based features cannot represent. The regions driving the prediction, including precuneus, ventromedial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, are among those previously implicated in internalising disorders, and the same signature tracks cognitive variation in healthy participants and is mechanistically linked to the efficiency of task-related computation. These findings establish a mechanistically interpretable and prospectively predictive marker of adolescent mental health and define a clear path towards external validation and clinical use.\n\n### Competing Interest Statement\n\nDAP has received consulting fees from Abbvie, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, Boehringer Ingelheim, Circular Genomics, Compass Pathways, Engrail Therapeutics, Neumora Therapeutics, N1 Bio Corp., Neurocrine Biosciences, Neuroscience Software, Tap Sciences, and Xenon Pharmaceuticals; he has received honoraria from the American Psychological Association, Psychonomic Society and Springer (for editorial work) and Alkermes; he has received research funding from the BIRD Foundation, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, Circular Genomics, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, National Institute of Mental Health, and Wellcome Leap; he has received stock options from Ceretype Neuromedicine, Compass Pathways, Engrail Therapeutics, Neumora Therapeutics, and Neuroscience Software.\n\n### Author Declarations\n\nI confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.\n\nYes\n\nThe details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:\n\nThe study used ONLY openly available human data that were originally located at the NIMH Data Archive (https://nda.nih.gov/) for the HCP BANDA cohort, released as the BANDA 1.1 Data Release (Hubbard et al. 2024), and at ConnectomeDB (https://db.humanconnectome.org/) for the Human Connectome Project Young Adult cohort used in the robustness analyses.\n\nI confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.\n\nYes\n\nI understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).\n\nYes\n\nI have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable.\n\nYes\n\n## Data Availability\n\nAll neuroimaging data used in this study are publicly available through standard data-sharing procedures. The HCP BANDA cohort, used for the primary clinical prediction analyses, is available through the NIMH Data Archive (https://nda.nih.gov/) as the BANDA 1.1 Data Release (Hubbard et al., 2024). The Human Connectome Project Young Adult data used for the robustness analyses (1200 participants at 3T and 182 at 7T) are available through ConnectomeDB (https://db.humanconnectome.org/). Both datasets require registration and a signed Data Use Agreement before download. The Schaefer1000 cortical parcellation used to extract regional time series is available through the CBIG repository (https://github.com/ThomasYeoLab/CBIG). Code implementing the whole-brain modelling pipeline, the Vaxjo Interference Connectivity computation and the modified Connectome-based Predictive Modelling analysis is publicly available at https://github.com/decolab/canary.\n\n[CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/baseline-brain-scan-predicts-adolescent-depression-and-anxiety-one-year-later", "canonical_source": "https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.08.26355206v1", "published_at": "2026-06-30 21:16:25+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-30 21:19:55.896090+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["machine-learning", "neural-networks", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Human Connectome Project", "Boston Adolescent Neuroimaging of Depression and Anxiety", "HCP BANDA", "DAP", "Abbvie", "Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals", "Boehringer Ingelheim", "National Institute of Mental Health"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/baseline-brain-scan-predicts-adolescent-depression-and-anxiety-one-year-later", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/baseline-brain-scan-predicts-adolescent-depression-and-anxiety-one-year-later.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/baseline-brain-scan-predicts-adolescent-depression-and-anxiety-one-year-later.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/baseline-brain-scan-predicts-adolescent-depression-and-anxiety-one-year-later.jsonld"}}