Table 2.

Overview of data- and theory-driven MDD treatment response prediction studies. Relevant model performance metrics (BAC and R2) that were not reported by the studies but were possible to calculate from the reported values are included in parentheses. MDD - major depressive disorder, TRD - treatment-resistant depression, LLD - late-life depression, SSRI - selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, rTMS - repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, SNRI - serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, NDRI - norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor, CBT - cognitive behavioral therapy, ECT - electroconvulsive therapy, BDI - Beck Depression Inventory, HAMD - Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, MADRS - Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale, QIDS-SR - Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology—Self Report, SOFAS - Social and Occupational Functioning Assessment Scale, CIDI - Composite International Diagnostic Interview, LCI - Life Chart Interview, STFT - short-time Fourier transform, EMD - empirical mode decompositions, ACC - anterior cingulate cortex, FC - functional connectivity, ROI - region of interest, ICA - independent component analysis, BOLD - blood oxygen level dependent, dlPFC - dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, amPFC - anterior medial prefrontal cortex, mPFC - medial prefrontal cortex, DMN - default mode network, SN - salience network, PCC - posterior cingulate cortex, AN - affective network, VIS - visual, SVM - support vector machine, ROC - receiver operating characteristic, CV - cross-validation, LOOCV - leave-one-out cross-validation, Acc - accuracy, SE - sensitivity, SP - specificity, BAC - balanced accuracy, AUC - area under curve, RMSE - root mean square error.

ReferenceSubjectsTreatmentModalityOutcome definitionFeaturesModelValidationPerformance
Mumtaz et al. (2017)  34 MDD SSRIs (type not specified) tbEEG: 3-stimulus visual oddball task Response: ≥50% ↓ in BDI-II Combination of wavelet coefficients, STFT, & EMD features Logistic regression 10-fold CV Acc 92% 
SE 90% 
SP 90% 
N. Bailey et al. (2018)  39 TRD rTMS tbEEG; Working memory task Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 Baseline and Week 1 MADRS scores, task accuracy & reaction time, alpha, theta, gamma power & connectivity, theta gamma coupling SVM 5-fold CV BAC 91% 
SE 90% 
SP 92% 
Miller et al. (2013)  17 MDD SSRI (escitalopram) tbfMRI; emotional words task Δ in HAMD-24 Clusters whose active during negative word processing was associated with treatment outcome Linear regression 10-fold CV (R2 = 0.23) r = 0.48, p < 0.05 
Godlewska et al. (2018)  32 MDD SSRI (escitalopram) tbfMRI: emotional faces task Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 Mean cluster activity within ACC for sad vs. happy faces Single-feature ROC LOOCV BAC 72% 
Fu et al. (2008)  19 MDD SSRI (fluoxetine) tbfMRI; implicit sad facial affect recognition task Remission: HAMD-17 ≤ 8 Whole-brain FC for each facial expression intensity (low, medium, high) SVM LOOCV Low intensity of sad facial expressions: 
SE 75% 
SP 62% 
p value = 0.11 (n.s.) 
Fonzo et al. (2019)  115 MDD (sertraline), 122 MDD (placebo) SSRI (sertraline) tbfMRI; Emotional conflict task Δ in HAMD-17 incongruent trials–congruent trials brain activation in several ROIs Relevance vector machine 10 × 10 stratified CV (R2 = 0.24) r = 0.49, p < 0.001 
Karim et al. (2018)  49 LLD SNRI (venlafaxine) rsfMRI and tbfMRI; emotional regulation & emotional reactivity task Remission: MADRS ≤ 10 Active regions during emotional reactivity, emotion regulation, or centrality at baseline & after single dose Logistic regression 10-fold CV (BAC 70%) 
AUC 77% 
SE 72% 
SP 68% 
Williams et al. (2015)  80 MDD SSRI (escitalopram, sertraline) or SNRI (venlafaxine) tbfMRI; Supraliminal & subliminal facial emotion task Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 Emotion vs. neutral amygdala activation Discriminant analysis LOOCV All medication types: Acc 75% 
SNRI only: Acc 77% 
Goldstein-Piekarski et al. (2016)  70 MDD SSRI (escitalopram, sertraline) or SNRI (venlafaxine) tbfMRI; emotional faces task Functional remission: HAMD-17 ≤ 7 and QIDS-SR ≤5 and ≥10 improvement to achieve ≥61 on SOFAS Early life stress & anygdala reactivity Logistic regression LOOCV (BAC 77%) 
SE 84% 
SP 69% 
AUC 81% 
Crane et al. (2017)  29 MDD SSRI (escitalopram) or SNRI (duloxetine) tbfMRI; Go/No-Go task Remission: HAMD score < 8 No-Go accuracy, two ICA component beta weights, & within-component clusters Logistic regression, Random forest LOOCV Logistic regression: 
Acc 90% 
(BAC 90%) 
SE 90% 
SP 89% 
Random forest: 
Acc 84% 
BAC (82%) 
SE 84% 
SP 80% 
Tozzi et al. (2020)  124 MDD SSRI (escitalopram, sertraline) or SNRI (venlafaxine) tbfMRI; Go/No-Go task Response: >50% ↓ in QIDS-SR-16 ROIs with BOLD response in No-Go > Go condition in MDD patients & healthy controls Logistic regression LOOCV Venlafaxine response: 
BAC 79% 
SE 67% 
SP 89%; 
Sertraline response: 
BAC 84% 
SE 95% 
SP 74% 
Marquand, Mourão-Miranda, Brammer, Cleare and Fu (2008)  20 MDD SSRI (fluoxetine) tbfMRI; n-back task Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 Principal components based on whole-brain activity for each task condition SVM LOOCV BAC 69% 
SE 85% 
SP 52% 
Meyer et al. (2019)  22 MDD SSRI (escitalopram) tbfMRI; n-back task Remission: MADRS ≤ 5 Nonremission: MADRS ≥ 10 dlPFC, amPFC, & parietal lobe Single-feature ROC LOOCV (BAC 87%) 
AUC 85% 
SE 82% 
SP 91% 
Nguyen et al. (2019)  37 MDD NDRI (bupropion) tbfMRI; reward processing task Δ in HAMD-17; Remission: HAMD-17 score < 7 ROIs from anticipation contrast maps & reward expectation contrast maps Dense feedforward neural networks 3 × 3 nested CV R2 = 0.26 
RMSE = 4.71 
AUC 71% 
Brandt et al. (2021)  90 MDD SSRI (escitalopram); an optional switch to SNRI (duloxetine) from Week 4 tbfMRI; reward processing task HAMD-6 Remission: >50% ↓ at week 4 and <5 at Week 8; Nonresponse: <25% ↓ a Week 4 and <50% ↓ at Week 8 Age, sex, baseline HAMD-6 and number of omissions in the task, & reward-related brain responses in striatum, anterior insula, & mPFC Logistic regression 5-fold CV AUC 56% 
Costafreda, Khanna, Mourao-Miranda, and Fu (2009)  16 MDD CBT tbfMRI; sad facial expression task Remission: HAMD-17 ≤ 7 Principal components based on whole-brain activity to viewing sad faces SVM LOOCV BAC 79% 
SE 71% 
SP 86% 
Cook et al. (2020)  129 MDD SSRI (escitalopram) or NDRI (bupropion) rsEEG Remission: HAMD-17 ≤ 7 Theta and alpha power values from FT7-FPz and FT8-FPz channels at baseline and Week 1 (QEEG) Single-feature ROC analysis Jack-knife CV Escitalopram remission: 
Acc 64% 
(BAC 65%) 
SE 74% 
SP 55% 
Erguzel et al. (2015)  55 TRD rTMS rsEEG Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 Frontal cordance calculated from delta & theta bands (QEEG) Artificial neural network k-fold CV Acc 85–89% 
(BAC 86–89%) 
SE 87–94% 
SP 84% 
AUC 87–91% 
Patel et al. (2015)  33 LLD SSRI (escilatopram) or SNRIs (duloxetine or venlafaxine) rsfMRI; sMRI Response: HAMD score < 10 Demographics, cognitive ability scores, functional connectivity index of dorsal DMN and anterior SN, & structural imaging variables Alternating decision tree (ADTree) Nested LOOCV Acc 89% 
SE 89% 
SP 90% 
Pei et al. (2020)  98 MDD SSRIs (mainly escitalopram) & SNRIs (mainly venlafaxine) rsfMRI Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-6 14 priori brain regions of interest based on previous literature SVM LOOCV BAC 81% 
SE 78% 
SP 84% 
Sikora et al. (2016)  29 MDD 1-week placebo & 10-week open-label antidepressant (SSRI, SNRI, NDRI, atypical) rsfMRI Δ in QIDS Baseline SN rsFC Multivariate relevance vector regression LOOCV Placebo response: (R2 = 0.17) R = 0.41, p value = 0.018; Antidepressant response: r = 0.03, p value = 0.340 
Braund et al. (2022)  229 MDD SSRI (escitalopram, sertraline) or SNRI (venlafaxine) rsfMRI Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 or QIDS-SR Whole-brain network intrinsic FC associated with neuroticism SVM LOOCV Acc 75% 
(BAC 74%) 
SE 63% 
SP 85% 
AUC 76% 
Goldstein-Piekarski et al. (2018)  75 MDD SSRI (escitalopram, sertraline) or SNRI (venlafaxine) rsfMRI Remission: HAMD-17 ≤ 7 Seed-based posterior cingulate cortex Logistic regression LOOCV PCC–ACC/mPFC: 
(BAC 78%) 
SE 73% 
SP 82% 
AUC 77% 
C. T. Wu et al. (2018)  22 TRD Sham-rTMS rsfMRI Δ in HAMD-17 Two feature sets: 1. Global brain activity; 2. Rostral ACC seed-based Elastic-net regression LOOCV Global brain activity: (R2 = 0.24) r = 0.49; p = 0.023; rostral ACC FC: (R2 = 0.25) r = 0.50; p = 0.018 
Cash et al. (2019)  47 MDD rTMS rsfMRI Response: ≥25% ↓ in MADRS; Δ in MADRS rsFC within the DMN & AN SVM LOOCV, k-fold CV Acc 93% 
SE 95% 
SP 92 % 
(R2 = 0.46) 
r = 0.68 
p value < 0.001 
Hopman et al. (2021)  70 TRD rTMS rsfMRI Response: ≥50% ↓ in MADRS Seed-based analysis with left dlPFC and subgenual ACC SVM Nested CV Acc 89% 
Moreno-Ortega et al. (2019)  18 TRD ECT rsfMRI Remission: 24-HAMD score ≤ 7 dlPFC, DMN, & VIS networks Logistic regression LOOCV Acc 89% 
Frässle et al. (2020)  85 MDD SSRIs or no treatment tbfMRI; emotional face perception task Long-term outcomes: remitted vs. improved vs. chronic, based on a latent class growth analysis using CIDI and LCI Effective connectivity pattern in the network mediating emotional face perception SVM Nested LOOCV Chronic vs. remitted: 
AUC 87% 
BAC 79% 
SE 97% 
SP 60% 
Improved vs. remitted: 
AUC 63% 
BAC 61% 
SE 77% 
SP 45% 
Queirazza et al. (2019)  25 MDD Computerized CBT model-based fMRI; RL task Response: >50% ↓ in BDI-II Neural activity encoding weighted reward prediction errors SVM LOOCV AUC 82% 
BAC 72% 
SE 63% 
SP 83% 
ReferenceSubjectsTreatmentModalityOutcome definitionFeaturesModelValidationPerformance
Mumtaz et al. (2017)  34 MDD SSRIs (type not specified) tbEEG: 3-stimulus visual oddball task Response: ≥50% ↓ in BDI-II Combination of wavelet coefficients, STFT, & EMD features Logistic regression 10-fold CV Acc 92% 
SE 90% 
SP 90% 
N. Bailey et al. (2018)  39 TRD rTMS tbEEG; Working memory task Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 Baseline and Week 1 MADRS scores, task accuracy & reaction time, alpha, theta, gamma power & connectivity, theta gamma coupling SVM 5-fold CV BAC 91% 
SE 90% 
SP 92% 
Miller et al. (2013)  17 MDD SSRI (escitalopram) tbfMRI; emotional words task Δ in HAMD-24 Clusters whose active during negative word processing was associated with treatment outcome Linear regression 10-fold CV (R2 = 0.23) r = 0.48, p < 0.05 
Godlewska et al. (2018)  32 MDD SSRI (escitalopram) tbfMRI: emotional faces task Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 Mean cluster activity within ACC for sad vs. happy faces Single-feature ROC LOOCV BAC 72% 
Fu et al. (2008)  19 MDD SSRI (fluoxetine) tbfMRI; implicit sad facial affect recognition task Remission: HAMD-17 ≤ 8 Whole-brain FC for each facial expression intensity (low, medium, high) SVM LOOCV Low intensity of sad facial expressions: 
SE 75% 
SP 62% 
p value = 0.11 (n.s.) 
Fonzo et al. (2019)  115 MDD (sertraline), 122 MDD (placebo) SSRI (sertraline) tbfMRI; Emotional conflict task Δ in HAMD-17 incongruent trials–congruent trials brain activation in several ROIs Relevance vector machine 10 × 10 stratified CV (R2 = 0.24) r = 0.49, p < 0.001 
Karim et al. (2018)  49 LLD SNRI (venlafaxine) rsfMRI and tbfMRI; emotional regulation & emotional reactivity task Remission: MADRS ≤ 10 Active regions during emotional reactivity, emotion regulation, or centrality at baseline & after single dose Logistic regression 10-fold CV (BAC 70%) 
AUC 77% 
SE 72% 
SP 68% 
Williams et al. (2015)  80 MDD SSRI (escitalopram, sertraline) or SNRI (venlafaxine) tbfMRI; Supraliminal & subliminal facial emotion task Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 Emotion vs. neutral amygdala activation Discriminant analysis LOOCV All medication types: Acc 75% 
SNRI only: Acc 77% 
Goldstein-Piekarski et al. (2016)  70 MDD SSRI (escitalopram, sertraline) or SNRI (venlafaxine) tbfMRI; emotional faces task Functional remission: HAMD-17 ≤ 7 and QIDS-SR ≤5 and ≥10 improvement to achieve ≥61 on SOFAS Early life stress & anygdala reactivity Logistic regression LOOCV (BAC 77%) 
SE 84% 
SP 69% 
AUC 81% 
Crane et al. (2017)  29 MDD SSRI (escitalopram) or SNRI (duloxetine) tbfMRI; Go/No-Go task Remission: HAMD score < 8 No-Go accuracy, two ICA component beta weights, & within-component clusters Logistic regression, Random forest LOOCV Logistic regression: 
Acc 90% 
(BAC 90%) 
SE 90% 
SP 89% 
Random forest: 
Acc 84% 
BAC (82%) 
SE 84% 
SP 80% 
Tozzi et al. (2020)  124 MDD SSRI (escitalopram, sertraline) or SNRI (venlafaxine) tbfMRI; Go/No-Go task Response: >50% ↓ in QIDS-SR-16 ROIs with BOLD response in No-Go > Go condition in MDD patients & healthy controls Logistic regression LOOCV Venlafaxine response: 
BAC 79% 
SE 67% 
SP 89%; 
Sertraline response: 
BAC 84% 
SE 95% 
SP 74% 
Marquand, Mourão-Miranda, Brammer, Cleare and Fu (2008)  20 MDD SSRI (fluoxetine) tbfMRI; n-back task Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 Principal components based on whole-brain activity for each task condition SVM LOOCV BAC 69% 
SE 85% 
SP 52% 
Meyer et al. (2019)  22 MDD SSRI (escitalopram) tbfMRI; n-back task Remission: MADRS ≤ 5 Nonremission: MADRS ≥ 10 dlPFC, amPFC, & parietal lobe Single-feature ROC LOOCV (BAC 87%) 
AUC 85% 
SE 82% 
SP 91% 
Nguyen et al. (2019)  37 MDD NDRI (bupropion) tbfMRI; reward processing task Δ in HAMD-17; Remission: HAMD-17 score < 7 ROIs from anticipation contrast maps & reward expectation contrast maps Dense feedforward neural networks 3 × 3 nested CV R2 = 0.26 
RMSE = 4.71 
AUC 71% 
Brandt et al. (2021)  90 MDD SSRI (escitalopram); an optional switch to SNRI (duloxetine) from Week 4 tbfMRI; reward processing task HAMD-6 Remission: >50% ↓ at week 4 and <5 at Week 8; Nonresponse: <25% ↓ a Week 4 and <50% ↓ at Week 8 Age, sex, baseline HAMD-6 and number of omissions in the task, & reward-related brain responses in striatum, anterior insula, & mPFC Logistic regression 5-fold CV AUC 56% 
Costafreda, Khanna, Mourao-Miranda, and Fu (2009)  16 MDD CBT tbfMRI; sad facial expression task Remission: HAMD-17 ≤ 7 Principal components based on whole-brain activity to viewing sad faces SVM LOOCV BAC 79% 
SE 71% 
SP 86% 
Cook et al. (2020)  129 MDD SSRI (escitalopram) or NDRI (bupropion) rsEEG Remission: HAMD-17 ≤ 7 Theta and alpha power values from FT7-FPz and FT8-FPz channels at baseline and Week 1 (QEEG) Single-feature ROC analysis Jack-knife CV Escitalopram remission: 
Acc 64% 
(BAC 65%) 
SE 74% 
SP 55% 
Erguzel et al. (2015)  55 TRD rTMS rsEEG Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 Frontal cordance calculated from delta & theta bands (QEEG) Artificial neural network k-fold CV Acc 85–89% 
(BAC 86–89%) 
SE 87–94% 
SP 84% 
AUC 87–91% 
Patel et al. (2015)  33 LLD SSRI (escilatopram) or SNRIs (duloxetine or venlafaxine) rsfMRI; sMRI Response: HAMD score < 10 Demographics, cognitive ability scores, functional connectivity index of dorsal DMN and anterior SN, & structural imaging variables Alternating decision tree (ADTree) Nested LOOCV Acc 89% 
SE 89% 
SP 90% 
Pei et al. (2020)  98 MDD SSRIs (mainly escitalopram) & SNRIs (mainly venlafaxine) rsfMRI Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-6 14 priori brain regions of interest based on previous literature SVM LOOCV BAC 81% 
SE 78% 
SP 84% 
Sikora et al. (2016)  29 MDD 1-week placebo & 10-week open-label antidepressant (SSRI, SNRI, NDRI, atypical) rsfMRI Δ in QIDS Baseline SN rsFC Multivariate relevance vector regression LOOCV Placebo response: (R2 = 0.17) R = 0.41, p value = 0.018; Antidepressant response: r = 0.03, p value = 0.340 
Braund et al. (2022)  229 MDD SSRI (escitalopram, sertraline) or SNRI (venlafaxine) rsfMRI Response: ≥50% ↓ in HAMD-17 or QIDS-SR Whole-brain network intrinsic FC associated with neuroticism SVM LOOCV Acc 75% 
(BAC 74%) 
SE 63% 
SP 85% 
AUC 76% 
Goldstein-Piekarski et al. (2018)  75 MDD SSRI (escitalopram, sertraline) or SNRI (venlafaxine) rsfMRI Remission: HAMD-17 ≤ 7 Seed-based posterior cingulate cortex Logistic regression LOOCV PCC–ACC/mPFC: 
(BAC 78%) 
SE 73% 
SP 82% 
AUC 77% 
C. T. Wu et al. (2018)  22 TRD Sham-rTMS rsfMRI Δ in HAMD-17 Two feature sets: 1. Global brain activity; 2. Rostral ACC seed-based Elastic-net regression LOOCV Global brain activity: (R2 = 0.24) r = 0.49; p = 0.023; rostral ACC FC: (R2 = 0.25) r = 0.50; p = 0.018 
Cash et al. (2019)  47 MDD rTMS rsfMRI Response: ≥25% ↓ in MADRS; Δ in MADRS rsFC within the DMN & AN SVM LOOCV, k-fold CV Acc 93% 
SE 95% 
SP 92 % 
(R2 = 0.46) 
r = 0.68 
p value < 0.001 
Hopman et al. (2021)  70 TRD rTMS rsfMRI Response: ≥50% ↓ in MADRS Seed-based analysis with left dlPFC and subgenual ACC SVM Nested CV Acc 89% 
Moreno-Ortega et al. (2019)  18 TRD ECT rsfMRI Remission: 24-HAMD score ≤ 7 dlPFC, DMN, & VIS networks Logistic regression LOOCV Acc 89% 
Frässle et al. (2020)  85 MDD SSRIs or no treatment tbfMRI; emotional face perception task Long-term outcomes: remitted vs. improved vs. chronic, based on a latent class growth analysis using CIDI and LCI Effective connectivity pattern in the network mediating emotional face perception SVM Nested LOOCV Chronic vs. remitted: 
AUC 87% 
BAC 79% 
SE 97% 
SP 60% 
Improved vs. remitted: 
AUC 63% 
BAC 61% 
SE 77% 
SP 45% 
Queirazza et al. (2019)  25 MDD Computerized CBT model-based fMRI; RL task Response: >50% ↓ in BDI-II Neural activity encoding weighted reward prediction errors SVM LOOCV AUC 82% 
BAC 72% 
SE 63% 
SP 83% 
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