Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New ResearchRelation Between Amygdala Structure and Function in Adolescents With Bipolar Disorder
Section snippets
Participants
Participants consisted of 21 adolescent outpatients with BD I (47.6% female subjects, mean age 15.10 years, SD 2.05 years) and 30 control adolescents (36.7% female subjects, mean age 14.17 years, SD 2.10 years). These data have not been reported previously, excluding presentation in part at the 63rd Annual Scientific Meeting and Convention of the Society of Biological Psychiatry.23 Participants with BD were referred from a University Medical Center, a Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, and the
Results
The control and BD groups did not differ statistically in age (p = .12) or sex distribution (p = .43). With regard to amygdala volume, two participants with BD showed excessive movement and were excluded from volumetric analyses. There was a significant main effect of diagnosis such that amygdala volumes were significantly smaller in the adolescents with BD relative to the control adolescents (F1,46 = 7.44, p = .009).Figure 1 shows areas of reduced volume, displaying the localization of
Discussion
We observed both significantly reduced amygdala volume and significantly increased amygdala response to emotional stimuli in a sample of adolescents with BD relative to controls. The structural and functional neuroimaging data for each participant were acquired in the same session. Moreover, an association was revealed between the structural and functional abnormalities, such that adolescents with BD who had the smallest amygdala volume exhibited the highest amygdala activation when processing
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Cited by (0)
This article was reviewed under and accepted by Ad Hoc Editor Daniel S. Pine, M.D.
This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH69747 [H.P.B.], T32MH14276 [J.H.K. and L.G.C.]), the Department of Veterans Affairs Research Enhancement Award Program (H.P.B. and L.G.C.), Howard Hughes Medical Institute (M.P.S.), NARSAD (H.P.B. and J.H.K.), the Attias Family Foundation (H.P.B.), Marcia Simon Kaplan (J.H.K.), the Ethel F. Donaghue Women's Investigator Program at Yale (H.P.B.), and the Klingenstein Foundation (J.H.K.).
These data were presented in part at the 63rd Annual Scientific Meeting and Convention of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, May 1 to 3, 2008, Washington, DC.
This article is dedicated to Ms. Kathleen Colonese, who was devoted to advancing research in youths with bipolar disorder and aiding the individuals with psychiatric illnesses and their families.
The authors thank Karen Martin, R.T.R.M.R., Terry Hickey, R.T.R.M.R., and Hedy Sarofin, R.T.R.M.R., for technical expertise and the research subjects for their participation. The authors also thank all the members of the Mood Disorders Research Program Team.