Understanding the lithium mechanism of action may allow us to predict which bipolar patients will respond to the medication (and which will not) and may shape our understanding of the causes of bipolar disorder itself. Research at the University of California, San Diego could lead to just these kind of breakthroughs in the next few years. In the first of …
Brain Response to Stress in Depression
A study looking at the brain response to stress in depression offers important clues about changes in brain function that may be associated with vulnerability to depression and what happens when a vulnerable individual becomes depressed. Researchers looked at brain activity using functional MRI in three groups of people: people with untreated first episode major depression, people with a history …
Negative Self-Appraisal and Brain Activity
Negative Self-Appraisal and Brain Activity: Altered Function in Depression Within the Default Mode Network (DMN) are three structures that link negative self-appraisal and brain activity: The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) And the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) Negative self-appraisal refers to the relentless critical self talk that occurs in many people with depression. Many patients report …
Functional Brain Imaging in Depression
Is there a role for functional brain imaging in depression? Many people seeking treatment are interested in the notion that the brain imaging, particularly imaging that looks at neural activity, might be useful in guiding treatment. Up until the last couple of years the answer to this question has always been that the role is primarily restricted to research settings …
A Possible Cause of Bipolar Mania
A recently published article by a group of Korean researchers hints at a possible cause of bipolar mania. The finding underlines the complex biology of bipolar disorder and perhaps why coming up with a biological mechanism for the dramatic shifts in behavior in bipolar has been so difficult. Background A number of pieces of evidence have suggested that phospholipase C signaling may be …
Depression Biology and Treatment
New research on depression biology and treatment highlights the rapid increase in knowledge in this area in the last decade. In this post we will summarize some of these research findings briefly. This brief tour will take us to a newly discovered protein that may be a vital link between stress and depression. A genome wide search for changes associated …
Significance of Events and Serotonin 2A
Making sense of the constant bombardment of information and sensory experience that all of us face requires the ability to determine the significance of events, and an elegant study suggests that the serotonin 2A receptor plays a critical role in determining significance. Many psychiatric conditions and human experiences are associated with the misattribution of meaning to events. For example, delusional disorder …
Poverty and Adversity Changes Brain Function
A remarkable study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry identifies ways that the experience of poverty and adversity changes brain function. Specifically, the study finds that adolescents growing up in lower socioeconomic environments are more likely to have the gene that codes for the serotonin transporter protein methylated in a region that is associated with increased reactivity of the amygdala to threat. …
Depression, Anhedonia, Glutamate, and Inflammation
That depression may be linked to alterations in glutamate circuits is suggested by the observation that ketamine (which is an NMDA glutamate receptor antagonist) may rapidly reverse depression in some patients. Depression has also been found to be associated in some people with various markers for inflammation (c reactive protein, tumor necrosis factor, interleukin 1 beta, and interleukin 6). As …
Depression and Inflammation
Is depression one of a series of illnesses caused by inflammation? There has been a lot of interest in the last year in the idea that inflammation (activation of the body’s immune system) might be a cause as well as a consequence of depression. One theory suggests that depression might be an inflammatory disorder, rather than a disorder of altered neurotransmitter levels. Certainly …