interesting, I remember reading population of Beijing seem to have lithium in their water or air so their new born and mothers carrying seem to have 20x of lithium concentration of what's considered normal...
The papers suggest a plausible mechanism by which lithium orotate could have an effect that would be not present with inorganic lithium salts.
IIRC the hypothesis is that lithium orotate does not fully dissociate in water and thus can cross the blood brain barrier much more easily than plain Li+, and then the cells in your brain can take up the lithium orotate, metabolize the orotate part, and make the free Li+ available.