Abstract
AbstractAdvances in medical imaging over the last half-century have impacted clinical care of neurological disorders and revolutionized our understanding of neuroanatomy and physiology. More, these advances have given investigators access to technologies allowing them to probe the brain much deeper and more fully than possible with the naked eye. The result has been an evolution in psychiatric research from an almost exclusive focus on behavioral change to more recent efforts to understand the neuropathology underlying psychiatric disorders. Arguably the research application of progressively available imaging techniques has had a particularly profound effect on studies of bipolar disorder, a condition with a level of symptomatic variability that has often complicated understanding. This increasing availability to investigators over recent decades of both structural and functional neuroimaging data has been instrumental in the development of newer, more evidence-based models of bipolar pathophysiology. In combination with advances in previously disparate fields such as genetics and epigenetics, as well as data analysis techniques such as machine learning, neuroimaging studies may revolutionize our understanding and treatment of bipolar disorder.