Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 66, Issue 9, 1 November 2009, Pages 814-823
Biological Psychiatry

Review
A Systematic Review of Diffusion Tensor Imaging Studies in Affective Disorders

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.05.024Get rights and content

White matter abnormalities constitute one element of the network dysfunction that underlies affective disorders: differences between the white matter of subjects with affective disorders and control subjects have been identified using a range of neuroimaging and histological techniques. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) can uniquely study the orientation and integrity of white matter tracts and is thus an ideal tool to shed light on white matter abnormalities in subjects with affective disorders. Here, we systematically review DTI studies of affective disorders. We identified DTI studies of affective disorders from EMBASE and MEDLINE and searched the reference lists of relevant papers. Twenty-seven articles comparing subjects with affective disorders with control subjects were included in the review, with eight studies included in a meta-analysis of superior frontal regions. Twenty-one of 27 studies found significantly lower anisotropy in subjects with affective disorders compared with control subjects, more specifically within the frontal and temporal lobes or tracts. A large effect size was detected within the superior frontal gyrus, although heterogeneity and one index of publication bias were significant. Although there is significant heterogeneity of acquisition and analysis methods and subject properties, DTI studies of affective disorders consistently identify reduced anisotropy in the frontal and temporal lobes and tracts of subjects with affective disorders relative to control subjects.

Section snippets

Methods and Materials

Online searches of the databases EMBASE and MEDLINE from 1996 were performed in April 2009, using the keywords ([“diffusion tensor”] and [“affective” or “bipolar” or “depress*”]). Reference lists of included studies were then searched for additional studies. Studies were included if they used DTI, with a minimum of six directions, to compare subjects with an affective disorder with healthy control subjects and were published in English as a journal article. Comparisons between additional

Literature Search

One hundred twenty citations were retrieved from EMBASE and MEDLINE, of which 27 met the inclusion criteria (Figure 1). Key details of the subjects and methods for each of the studies that met the inclusion criteria are outlined in Table 1.

Degree of Anisotropy

Twenty-seven studies compared the degree of anisotropy between subjects with affective disorders and control subjects, and their results are summarized in Table 2 (local analysis—ROI and tractography studies) and Table 3 (global analysis—VBA and TBSS

Summary

Overall, DTI studies consistently identified a reduction in anisotropy in subjects with affective disorders compared with control subjects (Table 2, Table 3). Reductions in anisotropy were largely localized to the frontal and temporal lobes or white matter tracts and detected in both hemispheres.

A large pooled effect size was detected in superior frontal white matter, which contains fibers of the DLPFC and ACC circuits (2, 3). Thus, findings support the theory that white matter abnormalities

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