The ENIGMA Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) Working Group is an international collaboration currently including 40 research samples from 14 different countries worldwide, including brain scans from around >5,000 MDD patients and >9,000 controls. The primary aim of our ENIGMA-MDD Working Group is to identify imaging markers that robustly discriminate MDD patients from healthy controls across many different samples using carefully a priori planned, standardized image processing and statistical analysis protocols. The ENIGMA MDD Working Group is led by A/Prof Lianne Schmaal (chair), Prof Dick Veltman (co-chair) and Elena Pozzi (coordinator).

A list of participating groups (updated May 2020) can be found here.

Click here to access our members page.

We are happy to welcome new cohorts at any time!

If you would like more information and/or are interested in participating, please contact A/Prof Lianne Schmaal and Dr Elena Pozzi

Publications:

• Subcortical brain alterations in major depressive disorder: findings from the ENIGMA Major Depressive Disorder working group (Schmaal et al. 2016 in Molecular Psychiatry), click here for a copy of the article.
• Cortical abnormalities in adults and adolescents with major depression based on brain scans from 20 cohorts worldwide in the ENIGMA Major Depressive Disorder Working Group (Schmaal et al. 2016b in Molecular Psychiatry), click here for a copy of the article.
• Childhood adversity impacts on brain subcortical structures relevant to depression (Frodl et al. 2017 in Journal of Psychiatric Research), click here for a copy of the article.
• Subcortical brain structure and suicidal behaviour in major depressive disorder: a meta-analysis from the ENIGMA-MDD working group (Rentería et al. 2017 in Translational Psychiatry), click here for a copy of the article.
• Interactive impact of severity of childhood maltreatment, depression, and age on cortical brain structure: mega-analytic findings from a large multi-site cohort (Tozzi et al., 2019 in Psychological Medicine), click here for a copy of the article.
• White matter disturbances in major depressive disorder: a coordinated analysis across 20 international cohorts in the ENIGMA MDD working group (van Velzen et al. 2019 in Molecular Psychiatry), click here for a copy of the article.
• No Alterations of Brain Structural Asymmetry in Major Depressive Disorder: An ENIGMA Consortium Analysis (de Kovel et al., 2019 in American Journal of Psychiatry), click here for a copy of the article.
• Classification of Major Depressive Disorder via Multi-Site Weighted LASSO Model (Zhu et al., 2017), click here for a copy of the article on arxiv.
• Brain Aging in Major Depressive Disorder: Results from the ENIGMA Major Depressive Disorder working group (Han et al., 2019), click here for a copy of the article on bioRxiv.
• Subcortical Shape Alterations in Major Depressive Disorder: Findings from the ENIGMA Major Depressive Disorder Working Group (Ho et al., 2019), click here for a copy of the article on bioRxiv.

Currently ongoing ENIGMA-MDD projects and the lead person on each one are as follows:

• MDD Suicidal ideation (Miguel Renteria, Adrian Campos) – Investigation of neuroanatomical correlates of suicidality in major depression that can be detected using brain MRI (cortical structure). Email: miguel.renteria@qimrberghofer.edu.au and Adrian.Campos@qimrberghofer.edu.au
• MDD Insomnia (Eus van Someren, Jeanne Leerssen). Uncover brain structural correlates of insomnia severity in MDD and healthy controls. Email: eusvansomeren@gmail.com and  j.leerssen@nin.knaw.nl
• MDD Hippocampal Subfields (Philipp Saemann). Email: saemann@mpipsykl.mpg.de
• MDD Lifespan (Lianne Schmaal, Johanna Bayer, Andre Marquand). Elucidating the association between MDD and structural brain alterations across the lifespan. Email: lianne.schmaal@unimelb.edu.au
• MDD Childhood trauma machine learning (Lauren Salminen, Paul Thompson). Adaptive identification of structural brain signature of early life stress and major depressive disorder. Email: Lauren.Salminen@loni.usc.edu and pthomp@usc.edu
• MDD Severity (Katharina Dohm). Neuroanatomical correlates of severity of depression in major depressive disorder. Email: k_dohm02@uni-muenster.de
• MDD Obesity (Nils Opel). Associations of BMI, polygenic risk score for obesity and brain structural alterations revealed by a multi-site approach. Email: n_opel01@uni-muenster.de
• Cross-disorder project Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia (MDD, BD, SZ working group leaders). Email: lianne.schmaal@unimelb.edu.au
• MDD Suicidality Risk Assessment Harmonisation project (Miguel Renteria, Adrian Campos). Harmonisation of suicidal risk assessment instruments in MDD. Email: miguel.renteria@qimrberghofer.edu.au and Adrian.Campos@qimrberghofer.edu.au
• MDD PRS Imaging project (Heather Whalley, Matt Harris, Andrew McIntosh). Associations of polygenic risk for major psychiatric disorder and brain structure in depression. Email: heather.whalley@ed.ac.uk, Mat.Harris@ed.ac.uk and andrew.mcintosh@ed.ac.uk
• MDD Antidepressants project (Lianne Schmaal, Chaira Serrarens, Laura van Velzen). Associations between antidepressant use and structural brain alterations in MDD patients. Email: lianne.schmaal@unimelb.edu.au  and chaira.serrarens@orygen.org.au
• ENIGMA MDD & PTSD Early Life Stress Project (Tiffany Ho, Lauren Salminen). Examining the shared and unique effects of childhood trauma on subcortical volumes, hippocampal subfields, cortical thickness, and surface area in MDD and PTSD. Email: tiffnie@stanford.edu and Lauren.Salminen@loni.usc.edu
• ENIGMA MDD Virtual Histology Project (Tomas Paus, Yash Patel). Investigating the neurobiology of psychiatry illnesses: A virtual histology approach. Email: tpaus@hollandbloorview.ca and ya.patel@mail.utoronto.ca
• ENIGMA MDD Atypical Subtype Project (Yara Toenders, Brenda Penninx, Lianne Schmaal). Associations between MDD subtypes, structural brain alterations and polygenic risk scores in ENIGMA MDD. Email: lianne.schmaal@unimelb.edu.au  and yara.toenders@orygen.org.au
• ENIGMA MDD Clustering project (Lee Jollans, Philipp Samann). Robust clustering of MDD subtypes using structural MRI and symptoms profiles. Email: lee_jollans@psych.mpg.de and saemann@psych.mpg.de

Current MDD member sites are illustrated below: