Will Neuroimaging Produce a Clinical Tool for Psychiatry?

Abstract

The increasing incidence, awareness, and social and economic impact of mental health disorders, the current status quo of treatment options and their limited success, and the extensive investment into brain imaging research raises an important question for the future behavioral medicine: will neuroimaging produce a clinical tool for psychiatry? Significant advances in neuroimaging over the past two decades allow psychiatric clinicians to peer into the living, functioning brain. Neuroimaging has been used to diagnose mental illnesses, to predict treatment outcomes, to find new stratifications of psychiatric disorders, and to provide therapy. The development of computational techniques, alongside several population neuroimaging efforts worldwide, increase the prospect for a first neuroimaging-based clinical tool. In this article, we describe the formidable challenges to creating such a tool and forecast how current institutions can solve them through social, technical, educational, and policy changes, improving data sharing practices, advances in technology, and integration between neuroimaging and other emerging information streams.