Why Brains Lose Their Flexibility in Psychiatric Conditions

Rutgers researchers find that dynamic brain function better explains individual mental health experiences than conventional diagnostic labels

Individuals with psychiatric conditions show reduced flexibility in their brain network dynamics, according to a new Rutgers study.

The human brain is organized into networks that can adaptively shift and reorganize to meet ever-changing cognitive and emotional demands. This flexible reconfiguration of brain networks over time supports our ability to regulate our thoughts and behavior. Disruptions in the brain's dynamic processes are thought to play an important role in psychiatric illness. However, it remains unclear how differences in brain network dynamics relate to the wide range of symptoms seen across mental health conditions.

The study, published in Nature Communications, was led by Carrisa Cocuzza, a postdoctoral fellow, and Avram Holmes, an associate professor of psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and core faculty member of the Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research within the Rutgers Brain Health Institute.

By showing that brain network dynamics track symptom variation across diagnostic boundaries, the study supports a shift toward more personalized, biology-informed models of mental health.

Avram Holmes

Associate Professor, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Core Faculty Member, Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research

The researchers used a large, transdiagnostic dataset of 219 people that included individuals with 11 psychiatric diagnoses, alongside extensive behavioral, cognitive and clinical assessments. Participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging scans both at rest and while performing tasks, allowing the researchers to examine how brain connectivity patterns changed across six cognitive states.

Using these data, team members characterized how brain networks reconfigure over time and identified individual "symptom fingerprints" by grouping behavioral and clinical measures into personalized profiles.

The researchers found individuals with psychiatric conditions showed reduced flexibility in their brain network dynamics.

"Their brain networks were less able to shift between different configurations across cognitive states compared to healthy individuals," Cocuzza said.

These flattened dynamics were useful for distinguishing between patients and healthy participants as well as for identifying specific diagnostic categories.

"This work addresses a central challenge in clinical neuroscience, linking changes in brain function to the diverse symptoms experienced across psychiatric disorders," Holmes said

Critically, patterns of brain network dynamics were more strongly related to individuals' symptom fingerprints than to traditional diagnostic labels, suggesting that dynamic features of brain function may provide a more precise way of understanding mental illness, capturing how symptoms manifest in each individual rather than simply whether a diagnosis is present.

"The findings indicate that impairments in time-varying brain processes may underlie differences in cognitive and behavioral functioning across individuals," Holmes added. "By showing that brain network dynamics track symptom variation across diagnostic boundaries, the study supports a shift toward more personalized, biology-informed models of mental health."

Future research will build on these findings to further explore how brain network dynamics change over time and with intervention, to develop more precise, individualized approaches for assessing and supporting mental health.

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