Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New researchComparing Brain Morphometry Across Multiple Childhood Psychiatric Disorders
Section snippets
Participants
Participants included 184 children and adolescents 8 to 19 years of age who were recruited from the community and participating in research studies at NIMH. As approved by the NIMH Institutional Review Board, after receiving a complete description of the study, parents and 18- to 19-year-old youth provided written informed consent, and youth provided written assent.
Participant characteristics are summarized in Table 1. Inclusion criteria for all groups included no siblings enrolled in the
Primary Voxelwise Analysis
One region in the left dlPFC survived peak-level whole-brain FWE correction (FWE-corrected p = .017) (Table 2, Figure 1). Post hoc pairwise comparisons showed that GMV in the left dlPFC differed in HVs both from patients with BD and from those with anxiety, but with opposite patterns: compared to HVs, GMV was increased in the anxious group, but decreased in the BD group. In addition, patients with anxiety showed increased GMV relative to each of the other four groups.
Secondary, Exploratory Voxelwise Analysis
Using the whole-brain
Discussion
The current study provides unique evidence of both disorder-specific and shared GMV differences across four pediatric mental disorders. Two key findings emerged. First, primary analyses revealed diagnostic specificity in the left dlPFC; relative to HVs, there was increased GMV in patients with anxiety, but decreased GMV in patients with BD. In secondary exploratory analyses, there was further evidence of BD-specific decreases and anxiety-specific increases in GMV relative to HVs in other PFC
References (63)
New approaches to psychiatric diagnostic classification
Neuron
(2014)- et al.
Anatomy of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia: a meta-analysis
Schizophr Res
(2010) - et al.
Subcortical volumes differentiate major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and remitted major depressive disorder
J Psychiatr Res
(2015) - et al.
Gray matter volume in adolescent anxiety: an impact of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor Val(66)Met polymorphism?
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(2013) - et al.
Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children−Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL): initial reliability and validity data
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(1997) - et al.
Preliminary studies of the reliability and validity of the children’s depression rating scale
J Am Acad Child Psychiatry
(1984) - et al.
Psychometric properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED): a replication study
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(1999) - et al.
Voxel-based morphometry in adolescents with bipolar disorder: first results
Psychiatry Res
(2004) - et al.
Voxel-based study of structural changes in first-episode patients with bipolar disorder
Biol Psychiatry
(2007) - et al.
Changes in gray matter volume in patients with bipolar disorder
Biol Psychiatry
(2005)
Neurostructural abnormalities in pediatric anxiety disorders
J Anxiety Disord
A pilot study of amygdala volumes in pediatric generalized anxiety disorder
Biol Psychiatry
Selective reduction in amygdala volume in pediatric anxiety disorders: a voxel-based morphometry investigation
Biol Psychiatry
The error-related negativity (ERN) and psychopathology: toward an endophenotype
Clin Psychol Rev
Voxelwise meta-analysis of gray matter abnormalities in bipolar disorder
Biol Psychiatry
Neuroimaging-based markers of bipolar disorder: evidence from two meta-analyses
J Affect Disord
Common and distinct neural correlates of emotional processing in bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder: a voxel-based meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies
Eur Neuropsychopharmacol
Cortical thickness, cortico-amygdalar networks, and externalizing behaviors in healthy children
Biol Psychiatry
Right anterior cingulate cortical thickness and bilateral striatal volume correlate with child behavior checklist aggressive behavior scores in healthy children
Biol Psychiatry
Decreased regional cortical thickness and thinning rate are associated with inattention symptoms in healthy children
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
Pediatric bipolar disorder versus severe mood dysregulation: risk for manic episodes on follow-up
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
Clinical and preclinical evidence for the neurotrophic effects of mood stabilizers: implications for the pathophysiology and treatment of manic-depressive illness
Biol Psychiatry
Effects of eight weeks of atypical antipsychotic treatment on middle frontal thickness in drug-naïve first-episode psychosis patients
Schizophr Res
Self-reported versus clinician-rated symptoms of depression as outcome measures in psychotherapy research on depression: a meta-analysis
Clin Psychol Rev
The influence of puberty on subcortical brain development
Neuroimage
Structural MRI of pediatric brain development: what have we learned and where are we going?
Neuron
Unique developmental trajectories of cortical thickness and surface area
Neuroimage
The common traits of the ACC and PFC in anxiety disorders in the DSM-5: meta-analysis of voxel-based morphometry studies
PLoS One
Research domain criteria (RDoC): toward a new classification framework for research on mental disorders
Am J Psychiatry
Challenges and strategies in helping the DSM become more dimensional and empirically based
Curr Psychiatry Rep
Identification of a common neurobiological substrate for mental illness
JAMA Psychiatry
Cited by (39)
Shared and Distinct Neurobiological Bases of Bipolar Disorder and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents: A Comparative Meta-analysis of Structural Abnormalities
2024, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent PsychiatryGray matter alterations in adolescent major depressive disorder and adolescent bipolar disorder
2023, Journal of Affective DisordersSystematic Review and Meta-analysis: Task-based fMRI Studies in Youths With Irritability
2023, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent PsychiatryIncreased resting-state brain entropy of parahippocampal gyrus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in manic and euthymic adolescent bipolar disorder
2021, Journal of Psychiatric ResearchNeural correlates of irritability in a community sample of children
2021, Journal of Affective DisordersCitation Excerpt :Jirsaraie et al. (2019) found irritability was associated with reduced cortical thickness in orbitofrontal, medial temporal, and lateral temporal regions. Compared to healthy youth, children with severe irritability have smaller gray matter volume (GMV) in the pre-supplementary motor area (Adleman et al., 2012), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Adleman et al., 2012; Gold et al., 2016), superior frontal gyrus (Gold et al., 2016), and larger insula volume (Adleman et al., 2012). These studies all compared GMV between diagnostic groups.
Gray matter volume correlates of adolescent posttraumatic stress disorder: A comparison of manual intervention and automated segmentation in FreeSurfer
2021, Psychiatry Research - Neuroimaging
This article was reviewed under and accepted by ad hoc editor Guido K.W. Frank, MD.
This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Mental Health/National Institutes of Health (NIMH/NIH), ZIAMH002781 (Pine), ZIAMH002778-15 (Leibenluft), ZIAMH002786-13 (Leibenluft), and based on Clinical Study Protocols 01-M-0192, 00-M-0198, and 02-M-0021.
Dr. Fromm served as the statistical expert for this research.
The authors acknowledge the work of the staff of the Section on Bipolar Spectrum Disorders, the Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience, and the NIH Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Core Facility. Most importantly, they thank the children and families who participated in this research.
Disclosure: Drs. Gold, Brotman, Adleman, Fromm, Mueller, Pine, Leibenluft, and Mss. Lever and Steuber report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.