Neuroimaging of bipolar disorder: emphasis on novel MRI techniques.

The explosion of neuroimaging in the last decade has contributed to a revision of the concept of bipolar disorder, which was traditionally seen as a cyclic illness with return to normality between episodes lacking "by default" permanent brain abnormalities. A conspicuous corpus of neuroimaging and neuropathology studies indicates that brain changes occur in bipolar disorder, although their etiology and their relation to clinical features are yet to be established. This review summarizes the results from magnetic resonance imaging studies using conventional and novel techniques in patients with bipolar disorder.