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. 2021 Aug;23(5):474-486.
doi: 10.1111/bdi.13012. Epub 2020 Oct 11.

Alterations in resting-state global brain connectivity in bipolar I disorder patients with prior suicide attempt

Xiaofang Cheng  1   2 , Jianshan Chen  2 , Xiaofei Zhang  2 , Yihe Zhang  3   4   5 , Qiuxia Wu  2 , Qing Ma  3   4   5 , Jiaqi Sun  2 , Wenjin Zou  2 , Taifeng Lin  2 , Liangda Zhong  2 , Wenhao Deng  2 , Xiaoyi Sun  3   4   5 , Liqian Cui  6 , Xiongchao Cheng  7 , Yingmei Chen  2 , Yinglian Cai  2 , Chaodun Zheng  2 , Daomeng Cheng  2 , Chanjuan Yang  2 , Biyu Ye  2 , Xiangyang Zhang  8 , Xinhua Wei  9   10 , Liping Cao  2
Affiliations

Alterations in resting-state global brain connectivity in bipolar I disorder patients with prior suicide attempt

Xiaofang Cheng et al. Bipolar Disord. 2021 Aug.

Abstract

Background: Bipolar I disorder (BD-I) is associated with a high risk of suicide attempt; however, the neural circuit dysfunction that confers suicidal vulnerability in individuals with this disorder remains largely unknown. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) allows non-invasive mapping of brain functional connectivity. The current study used an unbiased voxel-based graph theory analysis of rs-fMRI to investigate the intrinsic brain networks of BD-I patients with and without suicide attempt.

Methods: A total of 30 BD-I patients with suicide attempt (attempter group), 82 patients without suicide attempt (non-attempter group), and 67 healthy controls underwent rs-fMRI scan, and then global brain connectivity (GBC) was computed as the sum of connections of each voxel with all other gray matter voxels in the brain.

Results: Compared with the non-attempter group, we found regional differences in GBC values in emotion-encoding circuits, including the left superior temporal gyrus, bilateral insula/rolandic operculum, and right precuneus (PCu)/cuneus in the bipolar disorder (BD) attempter group, and these disrupted hub-like regions displayed fair to good power in distinguishing attempters from non-attempters among BD-I patients. GBC values of the right PCu/cuneus were positively correlated with illness duration and education in the attempter group.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that abnormal connectivity patterns in emotion-encoding circuits are associated with the increasing risk of vulnerability to suicide attempt in BD patients, and global dysconnectivity across these emotion-encoding circuits might serve as potential biomarkers for classification of suicide attempt in BD patients.

Keywords: bipolar disorder; global brain connectivity; precuneus; resting state; suicide.

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References

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