Bipolar Disorder Changes Some Brain Development in Adolescents

In adolescents with bipolar disorder, key areas of the brain that help regulate emotions develop differently, a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers shows.

In brain areas that regulate emotions, adolescents with bipolar disorder lose larger-than-anticipated volumes of gray matter, or neurons, and show no increase in white matter connections, which is a hallmark of normal adolescent brain development, according to the imaging study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

The differences were noted in the prefrontal cortex and insula in the magnetic resonance imaging scans — repeated over a two-year period — of 37 adolescents with bipolar disorder when compared to the scans of 35 adolescents without the disorder.

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