Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42431594›Full record

ArticleBiological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging2026

Increased Aperiodic Exponents Track Depressive Symptom Severity in Refractory Epilepsy.

Mark R Libowitz, Wendy Sun, Rikki Rabinovich, Jingnan Du, Justin M Campbell, Rhiannon L Cowan, Niloufar Shahdoust, T Alexander Price, Tyler S Davis, Randy L Buckner and 4 more

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Article in Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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2 · The registry

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Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

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No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

14 authors.

Mark R LibowitzSpencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; Department of Neurosurgery, Clinical Neurosciences Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; Interdepartmental Program in Neuroscience, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Wendy SunDivision of Medical Sciences, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
Rikki RabinovichDepartment of Neurosurgery, Clinical Neurosciences Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Jingnan DuDepartment of Psychology, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Justin M CampbellSpencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Rhiannon L CowanDepartment of Neurosurgery, Clinical Neurosciences Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Niloufar ShahdoustDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
T Alexander PriceDepartment of Neurosurgery, Clinical Neurosciences Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; Interdepartmental Program in Neuroscience, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Tyler S DavisDepartment of Neurosurgery, Clinical Neurosciences Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Randy L BucknerDepartment of Psychology, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
Shervin RahimpourDepartment of Neurosurgery, Clinical Neurosciences Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Brian J MickeyDepartment of Psychiatry, Huntsman Mental Health Institute, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Elliot H SmithDepartment of Neurosurgery, Clinical Neurosciences Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Ben ShoftyDepartment of Neurosurgery, Clinical Neurosciences Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. Electronic address: neuropub@hsc.utah.edu.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundMajor depressive disorder (MDD) remains a leading cause of disability, and approximately one-third of patients do not respond to standard treatments and develop treatment-resistant disease. Progress toward personalized neuromodulation has been limited by a lack of objective brain-based biomarkers that can guide circuit target selection and track symptom burden in real time. Here, we tested whether the aperiodic exponent of intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) local field potentials provides a neurophysiological marker of current depressive symptom severity.

methodsWe analyzed resting-state iEEG data from a cohort of patients undergoing invasive monitoring for refractory epilepsy (N = 20), comprising >1800 intracranial contacts sampling distributed cortical and subcortical regions, with depressive symptoms quantified immediately prior to recording using the Beck Depression Inventory-II.

resultsRegion- and network-level analyses localized aperiodic exponent effects to frontolimbic and insular circuits-including the orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and amygdala-and to the large-scale salience network (SAL) and default mode network, where exponents scaled continuously with symptom burden. In addition, exponents within the SAL tracked anhedonia. The whole-brain mean aperiodic exponent discriminated minimal versus elevated depressive symptom status (area under the curve = 0.82).

conclusionsTogether, these results identified intracranial aperiodic exponents as a scalable, circuit-relevant marker of current depressive symptom burden with potential utility for biomarker-informed, individualized neuromodulation in MDD.

Indexed as

BiomarkerDepressive symptom severityIntracranial electroencephalographyNeuromodulationSpectral slope (1/f)

Identifiers

PMID42431594

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.