The shared and disorder-specific resting state functional connectivity associated with emotion regulation between ADHD and bipolar disorder

BackgroundEmotion regulation deficits have been frequently observed between ADHD (Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD) and BD (bipolar disorder, BD) adults, however, common and distinguishable alterations in functional connectivity during rest remain poorly understood. ObjectivesThe current study was performed to determine the shared and disorder-specific resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) features within the proposed hierarchical emotion regulation model. MethodThe whole-brain seed-to-voxel functional connectivity analyses were performed on the neuroimaging data from the OpenFMRI project included 40 ADHD adults, 49 BD adults, as well as 49 age and gender matched healthy controls. ResultsOur findings showed significantly shared and disorder-specific rsFC circuits mainly linking to the processes of emotion perception and interception during emotion regulation but not response inhibition or executive control. Such as, the results found significantly enhanced functional connectivity strength between inferior occipital gyrus (IOG)-lingual/fusiform gyrus as well as superior parietal lobule (SPL)-insula circuits in ADHD group compared to healthy group (HG) and BD group, which suggests impaired emotional facial perception and interoceptive processing in ADHD than BD adults. In addition, the connectivity between precuneus and fusiform was significantly lower in both of ADHD and BD group compared to HG and no significant difference was found between patient groups. This indicates similar neural patterns underlying the impairment in emotion classification and emotional experience for ADHD and BD adults. ConclusionsTogether these findings can promote the understanding of common and disorder-specific neural mechanism underlying emotion dysregulations and facilitate neuroimaging-based clinical evaluation for ADHD and BD adults.