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Affective Disorders
Emotional States and The Limbic System
…recommended (summer) reading: Evil Genes by Barbara Oakley
Anxiety
• hyper-alert, resistant to change, context-dependent
Amygdala
HPA
Hippocampus
Cortisol
Depression• hypo-alert, ahedonia
Manic-Depressive (Bipolar)• waxes and wanes across months/years,
stress is normally a trigger
Robert Schumann’s productivity
Really? A chemical salt to treat bipolar disorder?
• Lithium – can replace Na++ as a generator of action
potentials– centrally decreases norephinephrine release
and enhances serotonin synthesis– efficacious in humans and in mice (see work
of CA McClung [PubMed])
Schizophrenia• severely out-of-touch with reality, delusions of
grandeur, auditory and visual hallucinations, and highly hereditable
Neurobiology of Schizophrenia
Hyperactivity in several brain areas Enlarged lateral ventricles
Increased Dopaminergic Tonus (Euphoria)
The Amygdala
Classes of Affective Disorders and Diverse Brain Dysfunction
• Anxiety– phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive
compulsive disorder– Neuropathology: limbic system
• Psychosis– schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder– Neurobiology: dopaminergic system
• Depression– post-partum, manic-depressive– Neurobiology: serotoninergic and noadrenergic systems
Genetic Changes Due to Environmental Stressors (Epigenetics)
• affects DNA transcription and translation which can have a HUGE impact on neuron function
• How? adding of DNA methyl groups, preventing or enabling unwinding of DNA around chromatin, to name a few
• Hugely popular in psychiatric research