Kumar et al., Shared White Matter Dysconnectivity in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder with Psychosis. (Psychological Medicine, in press) For more than 100 years now, there has been a great deal of enthusiasm and emphasis on differentiating the two major psychotic disorders: Bipolar Disorder & Schizophrenia. But what brain features are common to both disorders? Using microstructural indices derived from Diffusion Tensor Imaging (a technique to study white matter of the brain), we have shown that reduced integrity in callosal, fronto-occipital and paralimbic white matter is a feature of psychosis, irrespective of the categorical diagnostic boundaries. The degree of disruption in this structural connectivity predicted the degree of functional impairment in patients, over and above the information on functional ability provided by the categorical diagnosis for the 2 disorders.
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