Cortical abnormalities in bipolar disorder: an MRI analysis of 6503 individuals from the ENIGMA Bipolar Disorder Working Group
Publication year
2018Author(s)
Source
Molecular Psychiatry, 23, 4, (2018), pp. 932-942ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
PI Group Statistical Imaging Neuroscience
Cognitive Neuroscience
Psychiatry
Journal title
Molecular Psychiatry
Volume
vol. 23
Issue
iss. 4
Page start
p. 932
Page end
p. 942
Subject
Radboudumc 13: Stress-related disorders DCMN: Donders Center for Medical Neuroscience; Radboudumc 7: Neurodevelopmental disorders DCMN: Donders Center for Medical NeuroscienceAbstract
Despite decades of research, the pathophysiology of bipolar disorder (BD) is still not well understood. Structural brain differences have been associated with BD, but results from neuroimaging studies have been inconsistent. To address this, we performed the largest study to date of cortical gray matter thickness and surface area measures from brain magnetic resonance imaging scans of 6503 individuals including 1837 unrelated adults with BD and 2582 unrelated healthy controls for group differences while also examining the effects of commonly prescribed medications, age of illness onset, history of psychosis, mood state, age and sex differences on cortical regions. In BD, cortical gray matter was thinner in frontal, temporal and parietal regions of both brain hemispheres. BD had the strongest effects on left pars opercularis (Cohen's d=-0.293; P=1.71 x 10(-21)), left fusiform gyrus (d=-0.288; P=8.25 x 10(-21)) and left rostral middle frontal cortex (d=-0.276; P=2.99 x 10(-19)). Longer duration of illness (after accounting for age at the time of scanning) was associated with reduced cortical thickness in frontal, medial parietal and occipital regions. We found that several commonly prescribed medications, including lithium, antiepileptic and antipsychotic treatment showed significant associations with cortical thickness and surface area, even after accounting for patients who received multiple medications. We found evidence of reduced cortical surface area associated with a history of psychosis but no associations with mood state at the time of scanning. Our analysis revealed previously undetected associations and provides an extensive analysis of potential confounding variables in neuroimaging studies of BD.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [227881]
- Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging [3568]
- Electronic publications [107344]
- Faculty of Medical Sciences [86219]
- Open Access publications [76470]
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