Gender specificity of frontal activity based on fNIRS in distinguishing bipolar depression population from health control

Abstract Bipolar depression (BD) is a chronic psychiatric disorder characterized by recurring bouts of bipolar mania or hypomania followed by depression. In this essay, we used the functional near‐infrared spectroscopy to investigate the frontal function of BD in males and females, which included a total of 43 BD patients and 28 healthy subjects. The hemodynamic response associated with the task was estimated using the generalized linear model (GLM) approach. Wavelet transforms coherence and Granger causality (GC) methods were employed to calculate brain connectivity. GLM and GC results revealed that female patients were more distinguishable from healthy controls than males. Additionally, the correlation between BD scores and GLM results showed that the brain activation of male subjects was affected by their anxiety levels. This study suggests that traditional diagnostic methods for BD may not be as sensitive in men as in women.