Gray matter microstructure alterations with excess extra-cellular free water contribute to cognitive dysfunction in bipolar disorder: A comparative analysis with white matter pathology.

Background: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a chronic mental disorder involving cognitive dysfunction. Imaging studies reveal reduced cortical thickness and impaired white matter integrity in BD; however, the biological pathophysiology underlying cognitive dysfunctions remains unclear.

Methods: In 28 patients with euthymic BD and 28 healthy controls, we evaluated gray and white matter microstructure alterations using diffusion kurtosis imaging, free-water imaging, and neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging. We detected microstructure alterations using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) analysis and gray matter-based spatial statistics (GBSS). Voxel-wise analysis was performed to evaluate associations between microstructure alterations and cognitive performance measured by WAIS-IV.

Results: Compared to healthy controls, BD patients exhibited decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) and free-water (FW)-corrected FA, along with mean diffusivity (MD) and radial diffusivity (RD) across a wide area on TBSS. BD patients showed increased diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) indices, accompanied by increased isotropic volume fraction (ISOVF) and free-water (FW) in the frontal, temporal, parietal, and limbic areas on GBSS. The working memory index was negatively correlated with FW in the right hemisphere of the posterior corona radiata, and processing speed index was negatively correlated with FW in the bilateral isthmus of the cingulate gyrus, bilateral cerebellum cortex, parahippocampal gyrus, left hemisphere entorhinal cortex, and precuneus. Cognitive performance showed negligible correlations with DTI indices.

Conclusion: In BD, cognitive function was correlated with gray matter microstructure alterations, reflected by increased extracellular FW in relevant brain areas, more strongly than with white matter impairment according to decreased FA.