Association between cortical thickness or surface area and divergent thinking in patients with bipolar disorder

Apr 16, 2024Acta neuropsychiatrica

Cortical thickness and surface area linked to creative thinking in bipolar disorder patients

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Abstract

Total ATTA score in patients with bipolar disorder is negatively correlated with cortical thickness in the right middle frontal gyrus, right occipital, and left precuneus.

Divergent thinking performance did not differ significantly between patients with bipolar disorder and healthy controls.
In patients with bipolar disorder, higher total ATTA scores were associated with greater surface area in the right superior frontal gyrus.
No significant correlations were found between total ATTA scores and cortical measures in healthy controls.
The findings suggest that divergent thinking in patients with bipolar disorder involves brain regions related to executive control, mental imagery, and visual processing.

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OBJECTIVE: Divergent thinking is a critical creative cognitive process. Its neural mechanisms have been well-studied through structural and functional imaging in healthy individuals but are less explored in patients with bipolar disorder (BD). Because of the traditional link between creativity and BD, this study investigated the structural correlates of divergent thinking in patients with BD through surface-based morphometry.

METHODS: Fifty-nine patients diagnosed with BD I or BD II (35.3 ± 8.5 years) and 56 age- and sex-matched controls (33.9 ± 7.4 years) were recruited. The participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging and an evaluation of divergent thinking by using the Chinese version of the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA). FreeSurfer 7.0 was used to generate thickness and surface area maps for each participant. Brainwise regression of the association between cortical thickness or surface area and ATTA performance was conducted using general linear models.

RESULTS: Divergent thinking performance did not differ significantly between the patients with BD and the healthy controls. In these patients, total ATTA score was negatively correlated with cortical thickness in the right middle frontal gyrus, right occipital, and left precuneus but positively correlated with the surface area of the right superior frontal gyrus. By contrast, total ATTA scores and cortical thickness or surface area were not significantly correlated among the controls.

CONCLUSION: The findings indicate that divergent thinking involves cerebral structures for executive control, mental imagery, and visual processing in patients with BD, and the right prefrontal cortex might be the most crucial of these structures.

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Association between cortical thickness or surface area and divergent thinking in patients with bipolar disorder

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