Diffusion tensor imaging in euthymic bipolar disorder - A tract-based spatial statistics study.

Background: In the current DTI study we compared euthymic bipolar I disorder (BD-I) patients and healthy controls (HC). We subsequently divided the total patient group into lithium-users and non-lithium-users and estimated differences across the three groups.

Methods: Twenty-one euthymic BD-I patients and twenty-two HC participants were included in psychiatric interviews and MRI image acquisition (diffusion-weighted (DW) and T1-weighted scans).

Volume, metabolites and neuroinflammation of the hippocampus in bipolar disorder - A combined magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography study.

Background: The hippocampus is one of the brain regions that is involved in several pathophysiological theories about bipolar disorder (BD), such as the neuroinflammation theory and the corticolimbic metabolic dysregulation theory. We compared hippocampal volume and hippocampal metabolites in bipolar I disorder (BD-I) patients versus healthy controls (HCs) with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and spectroscopy (MRS). We post hoc investigated whether hippocampal volume and hippocampal metabolites were associated with microglial activation and explored if potential illness modifying factors affected these hippocampal measurements and whether these were associated with experienced mood and functioning.

Feature-expression heat maps--a new visual method to explore complex associations between two variable sets.

Introduction: Existing methods such as correlation plots and cluster heat maps are insufficient in the visual exploration of multiple associations between genetics and phenotype, which is of importance to achieve a better understanding of the pathophysiology of psychiatric and other illnesses. The implementation of a combined presentation of effect size and statistical significance in a graphical method, added to the ordering of the variables based on the effect-ordered data display principle was deemed useful by the authors to facilitate in the process of recognizing meaningful patterns in these associations.

Materials And Methods: The requirements, analyses and graphical presentation of the feature-expression heat map are described.

Neuroinflammation in bipolar disorder - A [(11)C]-(R)-PK11195 positron emission tomography study.

Background: The "monocyte-T-cell theory of mood disorders" regards neuroinflammation, i.e. marked activation of microglia, as a driving force in bipolar disorder.