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It would be therapeutically useful to predict clinical response to antidepressant drugs. We evaluated structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional MRI (fMRI) data as predictors of symptom change in people with depression.

Brain structure and function were measured with MRI in 17 patients with major depression immediately before 8 weeks treatment with fluoxetine 20 mg/day. For fMRI, patients were scanned during visual presentation of faces representing different intensities of sadness. Clinical response was measured by change in serial scores on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. Symptom change scores (and baseline symptom severity) were regressed on structural and functional MRI data to map brain regions where grey matter volume, or activation by sad facial affect processing, was significantly associated with symptom change (or baseline severity …