The hippocampal functional connectivity (FC) found in patients with major depressive disorder is different from the FC found in patients with bipolar disorder, an analysis of functional MRI data shows.
“ Ahmed Ameen Fateh and his associates wrote in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.
Mr. Fateh and his associates recruited 29 participants with depression and 30 with bipolar disorder, from a mental health center of Chengdu, Sichuan, China. An additional 30 healthy controls were recruited through advertisements, reported Mr. Fateh, a doctoral student at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu.
Using one-way analysis of variance, the investigators looked at possible differences in the participants’ hippocampal FC. The results showed that some regions exhibited significant differences in the hippocampal FC among the patients with major depression and bipolar disorder.
If their results could be replicated, the researchers wrote, “such differences may yield future trends towards improving the clinical differentiation between these two types of depression with significant therapeutic and prognostic implications.”
SOURCE: Fateh AA et al. Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging. 2019 Jan 12. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2019.01.004.