Bipolar disorder – brain’s areas where extreme states are located

A recently published study reveals the areas of the brain where the extreme states that people with bipolar disorder can reach are located.

Moods and emotions play a big role in our daily lives. They even influence how we deal with things – for example, whether we start the day feeling hopeful and energetic or grumpy and lethargic.

This can affect whether we interpret events in a positive or negative light.

In people with bipolar disorder, however, mood can change rapidly and unpredictably, leaving them “stuck” in either a low or high mood, which can have significant consequences.

However, researchers don’t know exactly what causes such extreme mood swings.

Now, a new study, published in Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science, has uncovered the areas of the brain that influence mood and the brain’s response to pleasure in bipolar disorder.

It’s possible that these new findings could one day lead to better treatments.

Mood swings in people with bipolar disorder

We all experience mood swings throughout the day. When we are in a good mood, we tend to see things more favorably.

If we happen to experience a series of successes and are “on a roll,” our good mood similarly reverses and gains momentum.

Similarly, when we are in a bad mood, we tend to perceive bad outcomes as even worse than they actually are – this negative mood similarly gains momentum and can make us feel worse.

Such a mood boost can influence how we perceive events and the decisions we make.

Imagine walking into a new restaurant for the first time. If you happen to be in a fantastic mood, you will likely perceive the experience as much better than it actually is.

This can influence your expectations that a future visit will provide a similar, positive experience, leaving you feeling disappointed if it doesn’t.

A double-edged sword

The process by which mood influences the perception of pleasurable or rewarding experiences has been thought to be amplified in people with bipolar disorder, who can experience moods that can quickly escalate to extremes.

We know from previous research that these extreme mood cycles can be triggered by life experiences that involve important goals – such as doing well in exams, buying a property or getting a promotion.

This could happen either by achieving them or by failing to achieve them.

Bipolar disorder has been described by those who experience it as a double-edged sword. In addition to periods of fluctuating (hypo)excited or depressive moods, many people with bipolar disorder energetically pursue goals that are important to them and are often successful.

But what happens in the brain when our moods change from one moment to the next in response to pleasurable experiences?

Brain areas corresponding to extreme moods

Pleasurable and rewarding experiences activate specific circuits in the brain that involve a neurochemical called dopamine.

This helps us learn that the experience was positive and that we should repeat the actions that give rise to this pleasurable experience.

One way to measure the brain’s response to reward is to examine activity in the ventral striatum – a key area of ​​our reward system responsible for the feeling of pleasure.

The current study set out to find out what happens in the ventral striatum in 21 participants with bipolar disorder and 21 control participants when momentary mood swings occur.

The researchers wanted to assess this on a timescale of seconds, in response to monetary rewards.

The participants were asked to play a computer game, which involved gambling to win or lose real money, while they were in a brain scanner.

A technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure blood flow in the participants’ brains to determine the active areas.

A mathematical model was also used to calculate the participants’ “moment” of mood – how good they felt when they continued to win.

In all participants, increased brain activity was observed in an area of ​​the brain that is involved in the experience and awareness of transient mood states – the anterior insula.

However, it turns out that during periods of upward momentum, when participants won many times, the ventral striatum showed a strong, positive signal only in participants with bipolar disorder.

This means that participants with bipolar disorder experienced an increased sense of reward.

It was also found that the level of communication between the ventral striatum and the anterior insula was reduced in participants with bipolar disorder.

In the control group, both the ventral striatum and the anterior insula began to connect.

This suggests that control participants are better able to hold their mood in mind when they perceive rewards in a particular task.

Why people with bipolar disorder can get stuck in a vicious cycle

Thus, although participants may have found it rewarding to win, we believe they were more aware that it put them in a better mood.

This could help them adapt quickly to a changing environment (for better or worse) and may protect them from having high expectations of a future reward.

On the other hand, this was the opposite for participants with bipolar disorder. This means that they were less able to maintain their mood based on how exciting or enjoyable they found the rewards.

These findings may help explain why people with bipolar disorder can get stuck in a vicious cycle in which their moods rise and sometimes lead them to take greater risks than usual.

The same mechanism that triggers a positive mood can also trigger a negative mood cycle.

If you have a series of wins and then unexpectedly lose, your mood can shift into a negative cycle, your expectations become negative, and your behavior changes accordingly.

However, future studies will need to investigate negative mood cycles more specifically.

The findings may also help develop interventions that help people with bipolar disorder better decouple their mood from their perceptions and decisions, without diminishing rewarding experiences.

Because dopamine neurons are tightly connected to the ventral striatum, it will be interesting to see whether dopamine medications could ameliorate this mood bias.

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Source: sciencealert.com, sciencedaily.com, neuroscientificallychallenged.com.

Photo: Wikipedia.

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