Jadwiga Rogowska1, M Lopez-Larson2,
M Bielecki3, Piotr Bogorodzki3, D Yurgelun-Todd2
1Brain Imaging Center, McLean
Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, United States; 2The
Brain Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States; 3Institute
of Radioelectronics, Warsaw Technical University, Warsaw, Poland
Human
imaging studies have implicated structural and functional abnormalities in
patients with bipolar disorder. In this study we examined the differences in
diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data between bipolar patients and healthy
control subjects using the methodology of Track-Based Spatial Statistics and
our newly developed SPM's Toolbox. We found that bipolar disorder patients
had significantly lower fractional anisotropy values within the cingulate
gyrus when compared to control subjects. Our findings suggest that DTI
techniques can highlight microstructural abnormalities in the brain, not
evident on conventional MRI, which may be associated with the neuropathology
of this disorder.
Keywords