Interhemispheric functional disconnection because of abnormal corpus callosum integrity in bipolar disorder type II.

BACKGROUND: A significantly lower fractional anisotropy (FA) value has been shown in anterior parts of the corpus callosum in patients with bipolar disorder.

AIMS: We investigated the association between abnormal corpus callosum integrity and interhemispheric functional connectivity (IFC) in patients with bipolar disorder.

METHODS: We examined the association between FA values in the corpus callosum (CC-FA) and the IFC between homotopic regions in the anterior cortical structures of bipolar disorder ( n =16) and major depressive disorder ( n =22) patients with depressed or euthymic states.

RESULTS: We found a positive correlation between the CC-FA and IFC values between homotopic regions of the ventral prefrontal cortex and insula cortex, and significantly lower IFC between these regions in bipolar disorder patients.

CONCLUSIONS: The abnormal corpus callosum integrity in bipolar disorder patients is relevant to the IFC between homotopic regions, possibly disturbing the exchange of emotional information between the cerebral hemispheres resulting in emotional dysregulation.

DECLARATION OF INTEREST: None.

COPYRIGHT AND USAGE: © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2016. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license.