Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified distinctive patterns in how the brain transitions between activity states in people with depression, providing new insight into why depressive symptoms can feel persistent and difficult to overcome.

Published online in Nature Communications, the study combined advanced neuroimaging techniques with mathematical modeling to examine how the brain moves between functional activity states over time. The findings suggest that depression may involve a form of “brain-state entrapment,” in which the brain becomes more likely to enter certain patterns of activity and less likely to transition out of them.

“Many patients describe depression as feeling stuck in negative patterns of thought, mood and behavior,” said Yael Jacob, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Dennis S. Charney, MD, Depression and Anxiety Discovery Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and senior author of the paper. “Our findings suggest that this experience of being ‘stuck’ may reflect measurable changes in the brain’s underlying dynamics.”