Material deprivation is associated with neural resilience for late-life depression

Abstract

AbstractLate-life depression (LLD) is a major source of global morbidity and mortality, influenced by multiple risk factors. Yet, a major challenge is to quantify the degree of resilience or vulnerability to LLD at the individual level, which could offer neurobiological insight and ultimately inform future interventions and treatment. Here, applying a non-parametric regression model to the UK Biobank data (N=1,988), we quantified brain-based resilience and vulnerability to LLD and tested whether risk factors could explain individual differences in the estimated magnitude of such neural resilience and vulnerability. Our results show that social isolation was positively associated with the median magnitude of neural vulnerability whereas material deprivation was negatively associated with the greatest neural resilience (top 10 percentile). These results together highlight the importance of social interaction and access to sufficient resources and services in diminishing neural vulnerability and promoting neural resilience to LLD, respectively. Our findings therefore provide insights into preventive strategies for LLD, and thus are of importance for policy makers as well as the broader society.