Marjolein Barendse

Abstract Bipolar and psychotic disorders are highly heritable and associated with widespread white matter microstructure abnormalities. In this project, we compare white matter microstructure of unaffected first-degree relatives of individuals with bipolar disorder (FDR-BD) or psychotic disorder (FDR-SZ) to that of control participants.

Introduction It is well known that the prevalence of depression increases strongly as children transition into adolescence (Costello, Copeland, & Angold, 2011). Rates of depressive symptoms in adolescents have also gone up in recent years in western countries and are much higher in girls compared with boys (Keyes, Gary, O'Malley, Hamilton, & Schulenberg, 2019).

There is consistent evidence of deviations in the frontostriatal network in depression. However, there is a strong need for prospective, longitudinal studies. Moreover, most research has not considered how depression and its functional impairments could impact later brain development. Therefore, we aimed to establish (bi)directionality of associations between structural connectivity in the frontostriatal network and depressive symptoms in adolescent girls.