Summary: New research suggests that feeling moves in bipolar disorder are regulated by two watches: the brain’s 24-hour daily pattern and a dopamine-based time that influences awareness. When these watches correlate at certain intervals, they does cause shifts between mania and depression.
By activating the dopamine time and creating mood patterns equivalent to manic cycling, researchers demonstrated this in animals. The findings could help to control the dopamine-based time and control disposition episodes by lowering their frequency and intensity.
Important Facts:
- Two Watches: Bipolar mood swings are influenced by daily and dopamine-based watches.
- Dopamine’s Role: A dopamine-driven music regulates mood cycling, specific from daily rhythms.
- Medical Target: Silencing the serotonin clock does offer a novel approach to manic treatments.
Origin: McGill University
According to new research, a mind music that works in tandem with the brain’s normal sleep-wake pattern may explain why bipolar patients alternative between mania and depression.
The McGill University-led research published in , Science Advances , marks a milestone in understanding what drives transitions between the two says, something that, according to direct author , Kai-Florian Storch, is considered the “holy grail” of bipolar-disorder analysis.
Storch, an Associate Professor in McGill’s Department of Psychiatry and a researcher at the Douglas Research Centre, said,” Our model offers the first universal system for feeling switching or racing, which operates similarly to the sun and the moon driving flower waves at specific, recurring days.”
The findings support the idea that the natural 24-hour time and a second clock, which are normally driven by dopamine-producing neurons, control frequently occurring feeling switches in patients with bipolar disorder.
Depending on how these two watches, which operate at various speeds, correlate at a specific point, a crazy or depressed condition may occur.
Importantly, the authors say this minute dopamine-based time perhaps stays dormant in healthy people.
In order to conduct their study, the researchers used mice to activate the following calendar to produce behavioural patterns akin to those seen in bipolar disorder. When they disrupted dopamine-producing cells in the body’s reward heart, these rhythms ceased, highlighting serotonin as a key element in the mood swings of bipolar disorder.
Hope for new treatments: Silencing the clock
According to the researchers, the current treatments for bipolar disorder focus on stabilizing moods but frequently neglect to address the causes of mood swings at the root.
” Our discovery of a dopamine-based arousal rhythm generator provides a novel and distinct target for treatment, which should aim to correct or silencing this clock to reduce the frequency and intensity of mood episodes,” said Storch.
The precise molecular mechanisms of the dopamine clock, as well as the genetic and environmental factors that might cause it to activate in humans, are still undetermined. Next, the research team will concentrate on these molecular “gears” and look into these potential triggers.
The Graham Boeckh Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Health, and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research provided funding for this study.
About this research in neuroscience and bipolar disorder
Author: Keila DePape
Source: McGill University
Contact: Keila DePape – McGill University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
By Kai-Florian Storch and colleagues,” In a sleep-wake and heightened activity state, mesolimbic dopamine neurons regulate infradian rhythms..” Science Advances
Abstract
In a sleep-wake and heightened activity state, mesolimbic dopamine neurons regulate infradian rhythms.
Patients with bipolar disorder ( BD ) have reported infradian mood and sleep-wake rhythms lasting 48 hours and longer, which suggests an endogenous origin.
In this study, we demonstrate that mice exposed to methamphetamine in drinking water develop infrarean locomotor rhythms with durations of 48 hours and beyond, which include sleep length and manic state-associated behaviors, to support a model for cycling in BD.
The cycling ability is impaired by a genetic defect involving the ventral tegmental area (VTA ) DA neurons ‘ production of dopamine ( DA ) or the removal of the nucleus accumbens projecting DA neurons.
In circadian clock-deficient mice, chemogenetic activation of VTADA neurons, including those that protrude through the nucleus accumbens, was counteracted by antipsychotic treatment.
Our findings together support the hypothesis that mesolimbic DA neurons are essential for BD cycling.
