How Brain Networks Distinguish Neurological and Psychiatric Diseases

A recent preprint, “Network-based disease fingerprinting with neuroinflammation PET imaging,” proposes a powerful shift in how we think about brain-based diagnosis: from isolated regions to distributed network fingerprints. Rather than asking where inflammation is strongest, the authors ask how patterns of connectivity involving neuroinflammatory signals differentiate diseases.

Figure 5 is the centrepiece of this story shows that:

Different conditions (MS, schizophrenia, depression, chronic low back pain, traumatic brain injury) are characterised by distinct sets of brain regions whose network connections drive diagnostic classification.

These regional “importance scores” are derived from logistic regression weights on network edges, aggregated per brain region, highlighting hubs rather than single abnormal nodes.

For each disease, only a small number of regions dominate the classification signal, suggesting compact, disease-specific network signatures.

SOURCE: Network-based disease fingerprinting withneuroinflammation PET imaging – Leonardo Barzon et al. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41282214/

Why this matters:

• It challenges the notion of a single “inflammation signature” across disorders.
• It supports network-level biomarkers as a path toward more specific, transdiagnostic yet differentiable brain markers.
• Clinically, it hints at future tools for objective disease stratification using PET-derived brain networks rather than region-by-region thresholds.

Together, these findings strongly reinforce the central message of my recent TEDx talk: that neuroinflammation should not be viewed as a localised abnormality, but as a network-level phenomenon capable of reshaping brain function. The same imaging approach that powerfully illustrated inflammation in neurodegenerative disease is now applied across a broader spectrum of conditions, including depression, chronic pain and traumatic brain injury. By revealing distinct, disease-specific network fingerprints, this work extends that original insight and underscores the transformative potential of neuroinflammation imaging as a unifying yet differentiating framework for brain-based diagnosis.

You can view Dr Allder’s TedX Talk here: https://youtu.be/rNaCkui7j2Y?si=UU0uAcz9zGtJL_RE