Fronto-temporal spontaneous resting state functional connectivity in pediatric bipolar disorder.

Background: The recent upsurge in interest about pediatric bipolar disorder (BD) has spurred the need for greater understanding of its neurobiology. Structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have implicated fronto-temporal dysfunction in pediatric BD. However, recent data suggest that task-dependent neural changes account for a small fraction of the brain's energy consumption.

Affect regulation in pediatric bipolar disorder.

Increasingly, clinicians and researchers alike are describing children presenting with emotional and behavioral problems as suffering from deficits of "affect regulation." The present article reviews the current understanding of affect regulation. The authors also discuss recent findings implicating affect dysregulation in children and adolescents with bipolar disorder.