The poetic, from the Muses, which brings enthusiasm and poetic furor
Brain neuroimaging studies continue to outline the structural and functional abnormalities in disorders of mood. A relatively consistent finding has been a reduced volume of the brain hippocampus in major depressive disorder. Studies of hippocampal volume in the less common bipolar disorder have been inconsistent–some studies have found reduced hippocampal volumes while others have not.
The hippocampus is an important brain region to understand in the mood disorders. The hippocampus has a key role in memory. Patients with mood disorders commonly display impairments in mood including deficitis in autobiographical memory. Unipolar depression appears to increase risk for later development of Alzheimer’s disease. Hippocampal volume reduction is a common finding in Alzheimer’s disease. (…)
Lithium is noted to have significant neuroprotective effects. (…) It is possible that bipolar patients treated with lithium may experience less hippocampal atrophy than those not treated with lithium.
charcoal on paper { Marius de Zayas, John Marin and Alfred Stieglitz, ca. 1912–13 }
