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A developmental study on the neural circuitry mediating response flexibility in bipolar disorder
Judah Weathers1, Melissa A Brotman, Christen M Deveney
1Section on Bipolar Spectrum Disorders, Emotion and Development Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD, USA. judah.weathers@yale.edu
Psychiatry Research
|August 21, 2013
Summary
Children with bipolar disorder (BD) show overactive brain responses during flexibility tasks, while adults with BD show underactive responses. These findings may represent an extreme of typical age-related brain differences in response flexibility.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Bipolar disorder (BD) impacts goal-directed behavior, potentially due to impaired response flexibility.
- Neuroimaging studies are crucial for understanding developmental brain differences in youth and adults with BD.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare neural circuitry for response flexibility in children with BD (CBD) versus adults with BD (ABD) and age-matched healthy controls.
- To investigate developmental differences in brain activation patterns related to response flexibility in bipolar disorder.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used during a response flexibility paradigm.
- Participants included healthy children, healthy adults, CBD, and ABD groups.
Main Results:
- CBD exhibited frontal, parietal, and temporal hyperactivation compared to healthy children and ABD.
- ABD showed hypoactivation in these same regions compared to healthy adults.
- Findings suggest patient activation patterns may extend typical age-related differences in healthy individuals.
Conclusions:
- Brain activation patterns during response flexibility differ significantly between children and adults with bipolar disorder.
- These differences may reflect an exaggerated form of age-related neural changes observed in healthy populations.
- Longitudinal fMRI studies are recommended to track developmental trajectories of neural circuitry in BD.
