In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in late-onset mental disorders. Among them, geriatric schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are significant health care risks and major causes of disability. We discussed whether late-onset schizophrenia (LOS) and late-onset bipolar (LOB) disorder can be a separate entity from early-onset schizophrenia (EOS) and early-onset bipolar (EOB) disorder in a subset of late-life schizophrenia or late-life bipolar disorder through neuroimaging studies. A literature search for imaging studies of LOS or LOB was performed in the PubMed database. Search terms used were "(imaging OR MRI OR CT OR SPECT OR DTI OR PET OR fMRI) AND (schizophrenia or bipolar disorder) AND late onset." Articles that were published in English before October 2013 were included. There were a few neuroimaging studies assessing whether LOS and LOB had different disease-specific neural substrates compared with EOS and EOB. These researches mainly observed volumetric differences in specific brain regions, white matter hyperintensities, diffusion tensor imaging, or functional neuroimaging to explore the differences between LOS and LOB and EOS and EOB. The aim of this review was to highlight the neural substrates involved in LOS and LOB through neuroimaging studies. The exploration of neuroanatomical markers may be the key to the understanding of underlying neurobiology in LOS and LOB.
Keywords: late-onset bipolar disorder; late-onset schizophrenia; neuroimaging.