Brains of Bipolar Teens Develop Differently, Research Finds

Rebecca Lewis June 12, 2015

In adolescents with bipolar disorder, the key areas of the brain that help regulate emotions develop differently, new research found.

Such differences were seen in the prefrontal cortex and insula in the magnetic resonance imaging scans of 37 adolescents with bipolar disorder when compared to the scans of 35 adolescents without the disorder. The brain scan was repeated after two years.

"In adolescence, the brain is very plastic so the hope is that one day we can develop interventions to prevent the development of bipolar disorder," said senior author Dr Hilary Blumberg, professor of psychiatry, diagnostic radiology, and in the Yale Child Study Centre.

Bipolar disorder, previously known as ‘manic disorder’ is a condition that affects a person’s mood, which can swing from one extreme to another. People with bipolar disorder struggle with periods or episodes of depression (when they feel very low and lethargic) and mania (when they feel very high and overactive). Unlike normal mood swings, each episode of bipolar disorder can last for several weeks, and some sufferers may not experience a "normal" mood very often.

There is no known cure for bipolar disorder. Treatments are aimed to control the effects of an episode and help someone with bipolar disorder live life as normally as possible.

While normal adolescents tend to lose grey matter in normal development, the new study showed that adolescents with bipolar disorder lose more. Moreover, the research demonstrated that in the brains of adolescents with bipolar disorder, there are fewer white matter connections that typically characterise healthy brain development into adulthood. These changes suggest that brain circuits that regulate emotions develop differently in adolescents with bipolar disorder.

The new study was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Source of this article: Anterior Cortical Development During Adolescence in Bipolar Disorder