A depression network caused by brain tumours

To systematically analyse and discuss whether suppressive heterogeneous brain tumours (BTs) belong to a common brain network and provide a theoretical basis for identifying BT patients with a high risk of depression and select therapeutic targets for clinical treatment. The PubMed database was systematically searched to obtain relevant case reports, and lesion locations were manually traced to standardised brain templates according to ITK-SNAP descriptive literature. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data sets were collected from 1,000 healthy adults aged 18–35 years. Each lesion location or functional connectivity area of the lesion network. Connectivity analysis was performed in an MN152 space, and Fisher z-transformation was applied to normalise the distribution of each value in the functional connectivity correlation map, and T maps of each tumour location network were calculated with the T score of individual voxels. This T score indicates the statistical significance of voxelwise connectivity at each tumour location. The lesion networks were thresholded at T = 7, creating binarised maps of brain regions connecting tumour locations, overlaying network maps to identify tumour-sensitive hubs and also assessing specific hubs with other conditional controls. A total of 18 patients describing depression following focal BTs were included. Of these cases, it was reported that depression-related tumours were unevenly distributed in the brain: 89% (16/18) were positively correlated with the left striatum, and the peak of the left striatum lesion network continuously overlapped. The depression-related tumour location was consistent with the tumour suppressor network (89%). These results suggest that sensitive hubs are aligned with specific networks, and specific hubs are aligned with sensitive networks. Brain tumour-related depression differs from acute lesion-related depression and may be related to the mapping of tumours to depression-related brain networks. It can provide an observational basis for the neuroanatomical basis of BT-related depression and a theoretical basis for identifying patients with BTs at high risk of depression and their subsequent clinical diagnosis and treatment. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00429-022-02573-z.