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Subcortical morphometry and psychomotor function in euthymic bipolar disorder with a history of psychosis

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Abstract

Psychomotor disturbances are prominent in bipolar disorder patients with a history of psychosis, but their neural correlates remain largely unexplored. We hypothesized that these psychomotor disturbances are associated with morphometric changes in functionally specific regions of the basal ganglia and thalamus. To test if psychomotor performance is associated with changes in volume and shape in these brain regions, we investigated 20 euthymic bipolar disorder patients with a history of psychosis and 20 healthy controls with structural magnetic resonance imaging and vertex-based morphometry. Within the patient group, the local shape of the basal ganglia was significantly associated with longer duration of illness, increased number of manic episodes, and treatment with antipsychotics. There were neither any statistically significant associations between psychomotor performance and morphometric measures in the patient group, nor any significant morphometric differences between patients and controls. We conclude that euthymic subjects with bipolar disorder and a previous history of psychosis show shape changes in regions of the basal ganglia associated to clinical variables that may predict psychomotor disturbances in bipolar disorder.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the Swedish Medical Research Council (K2011-61X-14647-09-3, K2010-61X-21569-01-1, and K2010-61P-21568-01-4), the Swedish foundation for Strategic Research, the Swedish Brain foundation, the Swedish Federal Government under the LUA/ALF agreement (ALF 20100305, ALFGBG-142041), and the Strategic Research Committee at Stockholm County Council (SLL) and Karolinska Institutet.

We wish to thank the patients and controls participating in this study. We also wish to thank the staff at the St Görans Bipolar Affective Disorder unit, including coordinator Martina Wennberg, study nurses Agneta Carlswärd-Kjellin and Benita Gezelius, and data managers Haydeh Olofsson and Mathias Kardell. We thank Björn Hultman, Pascal Borgström, and Josefin Östling for help with designing the neuropsychological test battery. We thank Dr Chrsistoffer Rahm for comments on the manuscript and Dr Caroline Wachtler for language revisions of the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Psychiatry, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Benny Liberg, Carl Johan Ekman, Carl Sellgren, Anette G. Johansson & Mikael Landén

  2. Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge, Psykiatri Sydväst, M 58, 141 86, Stockholm, Sweden

    Benny Liberg

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  1. Benny Liberg
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  2. Carl Johan Ekman
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Correspondence to Benny Liberg.

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Liberg, B., Ekman, C.J., Sellgren, C. et al. Subcortical morphometry and psychomotor function in euthymic bipolar disorder with a history of psychosis. Brain Imaging and Behavior 9, 333–341 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-014-9313-0

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