Increased ALFF and functional connectivity of the right striatum in bipolar disorder patients

Zhifang Zhang; Qijing Bo; Feng Li; Lei Zhao; Yun Wang; Rui Liu; Xiongying Chen; Chuanyue Wang; Yuan Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.pnpbp.2020.110140

Increased ALFF and functional connectivity of the right striatum in bipolar disorder patients

Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2021 Dec 20:111:110140. doi: 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2020.110140. Epub 2020 Oct 14.

Authors

Zhifang Zhang¹, Qijing Bo¹, Feng Li¹, Lei Zhao¹, Yun Wang¹, Rui Liu¹, Xiongying Chen¹, Chuanyue Wang¹, Yuan Zhou²

Affiliations

¹ The National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders & Beijing Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Beijing Anding Hospital & the Advanced Innovation Center for Human Brain Protection, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
² The National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders & Beijing Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Beijing Anding Hospital & the Advanced Innovation Center for Human Brain Protection, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology & Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101,China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. Electronic address: zhouyuan@psych.ac.cn.

PMID: 33068681
DOI: 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2020.110140

Abstract

Background: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a serious neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by alternating periods of mania, depression, and euthymia. Abnormal spontaneous brain activity within the cortical-striatal neural circuits has been observed in patients with BD. However, whether the abnormality appears in patients with BD while not in a manic mood state is unclear.

Methods: This study collected resting-state fMRI data from 65 patients with BD who were not in a manic mood state and 85 matched healthy controls. First, we examined differences in amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) between the patients with BD and the healthy controls to identify regions that show abnormal local spontaneous activity in the patients. Based on the ALFF results, we conducted seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analysis to identify the changes in brain networks that are centered on the regions showing abnormal local spontaneous activity in the patients. Finally, we repeated these analyses in a sub-sample comprising euthymic BD patients (N = 37) and between the euthymic BD patients and all the other patients who had at least mild depressive symptoms.

Results: BD patients exhibited increased ALFF in the right caudate/putamen and increased rsFC in the right caudate/putamen with the right inferior parietal lobe (cluster-level FWE p < 0.05). Further analyses showed that the euthymic BD patients showed similar abnormalities in ALFF and rsFC maps as found in all patients with BD. And the euthymic BD patients were comparable with all the other patients who had at least mild depressive symptoms in ALFF values.

Conclusions: Our results indicated the important role of the right striatum in the baseline brain function of BD patients and suggested that the abnormality of spontaneous brain activity in the cortical-striatal neural circuits may be a trait-like variant in patients with BD. The results deepen our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms associated with BD etiology.

Keywords: Amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations; Bipolar disorder; Functional connectivity; Resting-state fMRI.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Bipolar Disorder / physiopathology*
Brain / physiopathology*
Female
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging*
Male
Neostriatum / physiopathology*
Parietal Lobe / physiopathology
Young Adult