Gao Weijia, Zhang Kejing, Jiao Qing, Su Linyan, Cui Dong, Lu Shaojia, Yang Rongwang
Department of Child Psychology, The Children's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, National Clinical Research Center for Child Health, National Children's Regional Medical Center, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Department of Psychiatry, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Precision Psychiatry, Zhejiang Engineering Center for Mathematical Mental Health, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
BMC Psychiatry. 2025 Jun 3;25(1):574. doi: 10.1186/s12888-025-07018-5.
The thalamus plays a crucial role in sensory processing, emotional regulation, and cognitive functions, and its dysregulation may be implicated in psychosis. The aim of the present study was to examine the differences in thalamic subregional volumes between pediatric bipolar disorder patients with (P-PBD) and without psychotic symptoms (NP-PBD).
Participants including 28 P-PBD, 26 NP-PBD, and 18 healthy controls (HCs) underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) scanning using a 3.0T MRI scanner. All T1-weighted imaging data were processed by FreeSurfer 7.4.0 software. The volumetric differences of thalamic subregions among three groups were compared by using analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) and post-hoc analyses. Additionally, we applied a standard support vector classification (SVC) model for pairwise comparison among the three groups to identify brain regions with significant volumetric differences.
The ANCOVA revealed that significant volumetric differences were observed in the left pulvinar anterior (L_PuA) and left reuniens medial ventral (L_MV-re) thalamus among three groups. Post-hoc analysis revealed that patients with P-PBD exhibited decreased volumes in the L_PuA and L_MV-re when compared to the NP-PBD group and HCs, respectively. Furthermore, the SVC model revealed that the L_MV-re volume exhibited the best capacity to discriminate P-PBD from NP-PBD and HCs.
The present findings demonstrated that reduced thalamic subregional volumes in the L_PuA and L_MV-re might be associated with psychotic symptoms in PBD.
丘脑在感觉处理、情绪调节和认知功能中起关键作用，其功能失调可能与精神病有关。本研究的目的是检查有精神病症状（P-PBD）和无精神病症状（NP-PBD）的儿童双相情感障碍患者丘脑亚区域体积的差异。
28例P-PBD患者、26例NP-PBD患者和18名健康对照者（HCs）使用3.0T磁共振成像（sMRI）扫描仪进行结构磁共振成像扫描。所有T1加权成像数据均由FreeSurfer 7.4.0软件处理。采用协方差分析（ANCOVA）和事后分析比较三组丘脑亚区域的体积差异。此外，我们应用标准支持向量分类（SVC）模型对三组进行两两比较，以识别体积有显著差异的脑区。
ANCOVA显示，三组之间左丘脑前枕叶（L_PuA）和左丘脑内侧腹侧连合核（L_MV-re）存在显著的体积差异。事后分析显示，与NP-PBD组和HCs相比，P-PBD患者的L_PuA和L_MV-re体积分别减小。此外，SVC模型显示，L_MV-re体积在区分P-PBD与NP-PBD和HCs方面表现出最佳能力。
本研究结果表明，L_PuA和L_MV-re丘脑亚区域体积减小可能与双相情感障碍中的精神病症状有关。
