Contributions of brain connectivity to the understanding and diagnosis of mental illness

Abstract

Severe mental disorders continue to challenge and worry mental health professionals and researchers. The search for the underlying etiology, the fundamental pathophysiology, and the definitive treatment for these is still ongoing. Neuroimaging technologies contribute to the understanding of mental disorders and may emerge as a diagnostic tool. For this article, information on how severe mental illness has been studied using brain connectivity was tracked in the Web of Science database. After obtaining the results, the Tree of Science platform was used for bibliographic analysis. A general view of the topic of brain connectivity in mental illness was drawn, and some of the most critical findings in this search are presented. Some important aspects are discussed, such as the fact that the biological mechanisms that have been proposed to understand mental disorders, mainly mood disorders, generally had not included a neuropathological component. Finally, it is concluded that it is necessary to approach these disorders from transdisciplinary perspectives such as neuropsychiatry.