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Updated: May 22, 2026

Measurement of Fronto-limbic Activity Using an Emotional Oddball Task in Children with Familial High Risk for Schizophrenia
Published on: December 2, 2015
An MRI study of amygdala in schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar disorder
Pamela Belmonte Mahon1, Haley Eldridge, Britni Crocker
1Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA. pbelmon2@jhmi.edu
Abstract:
Meta-analyses report larger amygdala in subjects with bipolar disorder compared to schizophrenia. However, few studies have compared the size of amygdala in psychotic bipolar disorder with schizophrenia. Here we examine size of amygdala in a sample of 36 patients with psychotic bipolar disorder, 31 patients with schizophrenia and 27 healthy comparison subjects. Patients with schizophrenia had smaller amygdala compared with patients with psychotic bipolar disorder (p=0.014). These results suggest that change in volume of amygdala may represent a morphologic feature distinguishing psychotic bipolar disorder from schizophrenia.
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