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"Hyper-connected" brains could explain depression in young adults, according to new research.

Participants in the latest study underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging for researchers to determine their brain connectivity. Participants were between the ages of 18 and 23.

The study involved 30 previously depressed participants and 23 healthy controls.

"We wanted to see if the individuals who have had depression during their adolescence were different from their healthy peers," lead study author Rachel Jacobs, research assistant professor in psychiatry at University of Illinois at Chicago's Institute for Juvenile Research, said in a news release.

Researchers explain that brain regions that are "hyper-connected" communicate too much to each other. Researchers explain that hyper-connected brain regions could lead to rumination. Rumination happens when individuals think about a problem over and over without actively trying to come up with a solution.

"Rumination is not a very healthy way of processing emotion," co-researcher Scott Langenecker, associate professor of psychiatry and psychology at UIC, said in a news release. "Rumination is a risk factor for depression and for reoccurrence of depression if you've had it in the past."

"Cognitive control and rumination, as you might expect, are related to each other. As rumination goes up, cognitive control goes down," said Langenecker.

"If we can help youth learn how to shift out of maladaptive strategies such as rumination, this may protect them from developing chronic depression and help them stay well as adults," Jacobs said.

"We think that depression is a developmental outcome, and it's not a foregone conclusion that people need to become depressed. If we can provide prevention and treatment to those people that are most at risk, we might be able to prevent depression, reduce the number of depressive episodes, or reduce their severity," said Langenecker.

The findings were published online in the journal PLOS ONE.