Neural correlates of delusion in bipolar depression

Approximately one-half of all patients affected by bipolar disorder present psychotic features at least in one occasion. This factor worsens the personal and social burden of the disease. Several studies find an altered brain activity in mesolimbic and prefrontal regions in relation to aberrant attribution of salience to stimuli in delusional patients. The aim of the present study is to investigate gray matter (GM) structural correlates of the past history of delusions in a sample of bipolar patients. The sample includes 34 delusional and 39 non-delusional bipolar patients. Brain-imaging volumetric sequences were acquired on a 3.0 T scanner. Voxel based morphometry (VBM) was performed comparing delusional and non-delusional patients. VBM analysis found significant (p=0.001) differences in prefrontal areas and in the insula where delusional patients show lower GM volume compared to non-delusional patients. The main finding of the present study is a reduction of gray matter volume in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and in the insula of delusional patients. This result supports the hypothesis of abnormalities in salience and executive-control networks of delusional patients, which could be associated with an aberrant assignment of salience to the elements of one's own experience that is linked to delusion and psychotic symptoms.