Network localization of functional brain changes associated with ketamine's therapeutic effects in depression.
Biological psychiatry June 13, 2025 Shaoqiang Han, Ya Tian, Huiting Yang et al. 1 citation
A systematic review of 18 multimodal neuroimaging studies (440 depressed individuals, 174 healthy controls) mapped brain locations linked to ketamine's antidepressant effects onto a functional brain network. The network primarily involved regions of the default mode, ventral attention, and frontoparietal networks. This network was robust under parameter perturbations and leave-one-study-out validation, and was specific to depression compared to other mental disorders. A ketamine-specific circuit, including the subgenual cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, overlapped with optimal brain stimulation sites for depression. These findings reconcile inconsistent results and suggest a network-level mechanism for ketamine's therapeutic effects.