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Childhood attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common precursor of adult bipolar disorders (BD). Furthermore, actigraphy studies demonstrate that each disorder may be associated with abnormalities in sleep and activity patterns. This study investigates whether the presence or absence of self-reported childhood experiences of ADHD symptoms is associated with different sleep and activity patterns in adults with BD. A sample of 115 euthymic adult patients with BD was assessed for childhood ADHD symptoms using the Wender Utah Rating Scale (WURS) and then completed 21 days of actigraphy monitoring. Actigraphic measures of sleep quantity and variability and daytime activity were compared between BD groups classified as ADHD+ ( n  = 24) or ADHD- ( n  = 91), defined according to established cutoff scores for the WURS; then we examined any associations between sleep-wake cycle parameters and ADHD dimensions (using the continuous score on the WURS). Neither approach revealed any statistically significant associations between actigraphy parameters and childhood ADHD categories or dimensions. We conclude that the sleep and activity patterns of adult patients with BD do not differ according to their self-reported history of ADHD symptoms. We discuss the implications of these findings and suggest how future studies might confirm or refute our findings.

Background: Elderly bipolar disorder (BD) and behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) may exhibit similar symptoms and both disorders are characterized by selective abnormalities in cortical and subcortical regions that are associated with cognitive and emotional impairments. We aimed to investigate common and distinct neural substrates of BD and bvFTD by coupling, for the first time, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) techniques., Methods: 3-Tesla MRI and 18 fluorodeoxyglucose-PET scans were acquired for 16 elderly BD patients, 23 bvFTD patients with mild cognitive impairments and 68 healthy controls (48 for PET and 20 for MRI analyses)., Results: BD and bvFTD patients exhibit a different localization of grey matter reductions in the lateral prefrontal cortex, with the first group showing grey matter decrease in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the latter group showing grey matter reductions in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as well as unique grey matter and metabolic alterations within the orbitofrontal cortex. The bvFTD group also displayed unique volumetric shrinkage in regions within the temporo-parietal network together with greater metabolic impairments within the temporal cortex and more extensive volumetric and metabolic abnormalities within the limbic lobe. Finally, while the BD group showed greater grey matter volumes in caudate nucleus, bvFTD subjects displayed lower metabolism., Conclusion: This MRI-PET study explored, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, structural and functional abnormalities in bvFTD and elderly BD patients, with the final aim of identifying the specific biological signature of these disorders, which might have important implications not only in prevention but also in differential diagnosis and treatment.