A neural signature for gastrointestinal symptoms in depression: insula-gastric connectivity predicts symptom severity.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms are a common and burdensome dimension of major depressive disorder (MDD), yet their neurobiological underpinnings are poorly understood. It is unclear how the brain's processing of visceral signals relates to the subjective experience of GI distress in depression. We aimed to identify a neural substrate for GI symptoms by examining functional connectivity (FC) between the insula and a network defined by gastric rhythms.

Methods

We first identified a gastric-related seed in the posterior insula (GD-pINS) using a large normative dataset of 652 healthy adults. Subsequently, 100 MDD patients-stratified into groups with (GD; n=58) and without (NGD; n=42) GI symptoms-and 80 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. Using resting-state fMRI, w

SUBMITTER: Qi L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12673926 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature