Differential levels of prefrontal cortex glutamate+glutamine in adults with antisocial personality disorder and bipolar disorder: A proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy study

Publication date: Available online 5 April 2019Source: Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological PsychiatryAuthor(s): Areti Smaragdi, Sofia Chavez, Nancy J. Lobaugh, Jeffrey H. Meyer, Nathan J. KollaAbstractAs the main excitatory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system, glutamate, as measured in combination with glutamine (Glx), is implicated in several psychopathologies when levels are aberrant. One illness that shows heightened Glx levels is bipolar disorder (BD), an illness characterized by high impulsivity. In addition, although animal studies have reported elevated levels of Glx in aggressive and impulsive phenotypes, no study, to our knowledge, has reported Glx in the human cortex in relation to aggression. Here, we addressed the question of whether elevated levels of Glx would be present in patients with BD and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), a condition associated with aggression and, like BD, also presents high impulsivity. We recruited individuals with ASPD (n = 18), individuals with BD (n = 16), and a healthy control group (n = 24). We used proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy to measure relative neurometabolite concentrations in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and supra-genual anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), two brain regions associated with impulsivity and behavior control. We found significantly elevated levels of Glx in the ASPD group relative to the BD and healthy control groups in the dlPFC (p = .014...
Source: Progress in Neuro Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research