Wei Gao1, John Gilmore2, Shun Xu3,
Weili Lin
1Radiology & BRIC,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States; 2Psychiatry,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States; 3Computer
Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Given the high heritability of bipolar disorder (BD), the study of the offspring of BD parents (i.e., high-risk children) may provide an excellent model to delineate its pathophysiology during early development. In this study, 46 high-risk children aged at ~3wks, 1yr, and 2yrs were recruited to undergo a resting-state functional magnetic-resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scan and graph theory analysis was employed to delineate potential abnormal functional connectivity development, particularly the global (GE) and local wiring efficiency (LE) for information transfer in the brain. Without any explicit symptoms at such young ages, we detected significant functional connectivity abnormality, which might potentially serve as more objective early diagnosis measures.