Trait and state corticostriatal dysfunction in bipolar disorder during emotional face processing

Abstract

Objectives Convergent evidence supports limbic, anterior paralimbic, and prefrontal cortex (PFC) abnormalities in emotional processing in bipolar disorder (BD) and suggests that some abnormalities are mood-state-dependent and others persist into euthymia. However, few studies have assessed elevated, depressed, and euthymic mood states while individuals processed emotional stimuli of varying valence to investigate trait- and state-related neural system responses. Here, regional brain responses to positive, negative, and neutral emotional stimuli were assessed in individuals with BD during elevated, depressed, and euthymic mood states. Methods One hundred and thirty-four subjects participated in functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning while processing faces depicting happy, fearful, and neutral expressions: 76 with BD (18 in elevated mood states, 19 depressed, 39 euthymic) and 58 healthy comparison (HC) individuals. Analyses were performed for BD trait- and mood-state-related features. Results Ventral anterior cingulate cortex (VACC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and ventral striatum responses to happy and neutral faces were decreased in the BD group, compared to the HC group, and were not influenced by mood state. Elevated mood states were associated with decreased right rostral PFC activation to fearful and neutral faces, and depression was associated with increased left OFC activation to fearful faces. Conclusions The findings suggest that abnormal VACC, OFC, and ventral striatum responses to happy and neutral stimuli are trait features of BD. Acute mood states may be associated with additional lateralized abnormalities of diminished right rostral PFC responses to fearful and neutral stimuli in elevated states and increased left OFC responses to fearful stimuli in depressed states.

Anterior Cortical Development During Adolescence in Bipolar Disorder

“…Consistent with right-lateralized abnormalities, studies have reported reduced right frontal GM volume (72,73) and right UF WM integrity (53,60). PFC functional abnormalities in mania in BD have also tended to be right-sided (74–77). These findings suggest that the right hemisphere abnormalities observed in this study might be related to increased risk for mania.…”

Neural correlates of negative emotion processing in bipolar disorder

“…On the contrary, other studies found that euthymic BD-I patients did not differ from normal controls while processing negative faces or passively viewing negative images, whereas differences were observed while processing happy/neutral faces (Liu et al, 2012) or during a down-regulation task (Townsend et al, 2013).…”

Atypical right hemispheric functioning in the euthymic state of bipolar affective disorder

“…Emotional dysregulation in BD has also been linked to atypical functional hemispheric asymmetries as shown by neuroimaging studies (Yurgelun-Todd et al, 2000;Foland et al, 2008;Killgore et al, 2008;Strakowski et al, 2011;Liu et al, 2012) suggesting a deviation from the typical right hemisphere advantage in emotion perception. For example, Killgore et al, (2008) found a decrease in right inferior orbitofrontal activation in BD patients with manic symptoms during passive viewing of a series of black and white fearful facial expressions.…”