In 1998, Yvette Sheline, M.D. received a Young Investigator Grant for a project titled “Affect Induced Activation of the Amygdala in Major Depression.” The results of this project, published in 2001, demonstrated that antidepressants correct abnormal brain function by reducing limbic over-activation and prefrontal cortex under-activation to alleviate symptoms of depression.

Dr. Sheline had led earlier breakthrough research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that identified structural brain changes in the hippocampus and amygdala in depression, establishing depression as a brain disease. The results of the work were published in a paper in 1996 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and has become one of the most cited papers in psychiatric literature.

The Foundation Grant-supported work was the first to identify amygdala over-activity to fearful faces in depression and opened a new field of fMRI-face experiments.