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To determine whether the progressive course of bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with progressive structural changes in the brain, Swedish investigators conducted a longitudinal study in which they compared prospective MRIs on 123 BD patients and 83 controls at baseline and 6 years later.
Whereas controls demonstrated cortical thinning in multiple brain regions, BD patients had significantly greater cortical thinning than controls in the middle temporal cortex and increased cortical thickness in visual and somatosensory cortices. BD patients who experienced mania or hypomania between scans had greater thinning in the left inferior frontal cortex than controls or bipolar patients without mania. The results were the same in BD type I and BD …