How do happiness and sadness circuits contribute to bipolar disorder?

January 14, 2013 in Psychology & Psychiatry

Bipolar disorder is a severe mood disorder characterized by unpredictable and dramatic mood swings between the highs of mania and lows of depression. These mood episodes occur among periods of 'normal mood', termed euthymia.

Prior research has clearly shown that brain emotion circuitry is dysregulated in individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It is thought that these disturbances impair one's ability to control emotion and contribute to mood episodes.

Continuing this line of research, the January 15th issue of reports the results of a study conducted by scientists from Indiana University School of Medicine. These investigators used functional (fMRI) to investigate which areas of the brain showed abnormal activation while patients in different mood phases of bipolar disorder tried to control their response to emotional and non-emotional material.

This allowed them to analyze based on patient mood (manic, depressed, or euthymic) and stimuli type (emotion versus no emotion and happy versus sad). Because medication effects on brain activation have been observed in some studies, the researchers recruited only unmedicated volunteers.

They found that bipolar depressed patients abnormally activated brain areas when they had to withhold responses to sad faces. Manic patients, on the other hand, had abnormal activation regardless of whether they were trying to withhold response to sad faces, or non-emotional material. Even the euthymic bipolar subjects showed abnormal activation of cortical areas of the brain while withholding responses to emotional faces.

These findings suggest that distinct circuit dysfunctions may contribute to different features of emotion dysregulation in bipolar disorder.

Professor and senior author Dr. Amit Anand said, "This study provides important information regarding that may be important in controlling response to emotional material and the functional abnormalities in these areas in mood disorders."

"It is interesting that subtly different circuits distinguish symptomatic and non-symptomatic patients with bipolar disorder when they are suppressing their happy and sad reactions," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "These findings may have implications for the refinement of circuit-based treatments for bipolar disorder including neurostimulation and psychotherapy."

More information: Hummer, T. Emotional Response Inhibition in Bipolar Disorder: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Trait- and State-Related Abnormalities. Biological Psychiatry, Volume 73, Issue 2 (January 15, 2013). doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.06.036

Journal reference: Biological Psychiatry search and more info website

Provided by Elsevier search and more info website

4 /5 (1 vote)  

Rank 4 /5 (1 vote)
Relevant PhysicsForums posts

More news stories

Depression raises diabetics' risk of severe low blood sugar episodes

(Medical Xpress)—Patients with diabetes who are depressed are much more likely to develop episodes of dangerously low blood sugars, or hypoglycemia, than are those who are not depressed, a new study has ...

Psychology & Psychiatry created 9 minutes ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Motion quotient: IQ predicted by ability to filter motion (w/ video)

A brief visual task can predict IQ, according to a new study. This surprisingly simple exercise measures the brain's unconscious ability to filter out visual movement. The study shows that individuals whose ...

Psychology & Psychiatry created 20 hours ago | popularity 4.5 / 5 (10) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Anxious men fare worse during job interviews, study finds

Nervous about that upcoming job interview? You might want to take steps to reduce your jitters, especially if you are a man.

Psychology & Psychiatry created 20 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Are kids who take music lessons different from other kids?

(Medical Xpress)—Research by U of T Mississauga psychology professor Glenn Schellenberg reveals that two key personality traits – openness-to-experience and conscientiousness—predict better than IQ ...

Psychology & Psychiatry created 22 hours ago | popularity 3 / 5 (2) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Parents can help preteens with abduction concerns

Parents naturally are concerned for their children's safety, particularly when there is news of a child abduction that happens close to home. Finding the balance between emotions and the "teachable moment" as parents talk ...

Psychology & Psychiatry created 23 hours ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0


Alzheimer's disease, the soft target of the euthanasia debate

(Medical Xpress)—The way Alzheimer's disease is portrayed by advocacy groups and the media is having undue influence on the euthanasia debate, according to a Deakin University nursing ethics professor.

Patenting the human genome

Can human genes be patented? That was the question posed by Alan J. Snyder, vice president and associate provost for research and graduate studies at Lehigh, and Lee Kaplan, scientific director of cellular and molecular genetics ...

Cardiac study used as source for new guidelines on treating people undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery

Cardiac research from the University of Alberta had serious impact as a source for the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association's new guidelines on how to treat patients undergoing coronary artery ...

How the EU could help more children survive cancer

A leading expert in childhood cancer at The University of Nottingham is spearheading a Europe-wide lobby of the European Parliament to try to make it easier for doctors to develop and test new treatments on children and young ...

Controlling mood through the motions of mitochondria

(Medical Xpress)—Regulating the distribution of power in neurons is done by a system that makes the national electric grid look simple by comparison. Each neuron has several thousand mitochondria confined ...

Obesity weighs down on top soda guzzler Mexico

Artemio Martinez balanced his corpulent frame on a stool in a Mexico City street taco stand, downing a sweet soda and eating a final pork-filled corn tortilla.