Bio psycho: the change of potassium ion level is related to the formation of manic depression

February 21, 2020 / BIOON / -- people with manic depression will have dramatic changes in mood, and will oscillate between manic and depression Although one third of patients can be successfully treated with lithium drugs, most patients are still trying to find effective treatment options Now, a series of new findings by Salk researchers reveal why some neurons in manic depressive patients oscillate between over inhibition or over excitation In two recent papers published in the journal Biological Psychology, Salk researchers used experimental and computational techniques to describe changes in potassium and sodium currents in brain cells of manic depression patients Professor rusty gage, senior author of the study and director of the Institute, said: "our findings reveal the molecular and cellular mechanism of manic depression, which also takes us a step further away from new therapies that can treat the disease." (image source: www Pixabay Com) in 2015, gage and colleagues first found the initial differences between brain cells in patients who responded to lithium drugs and those who did not respond to lithium drugs In both cases, compared with the neurons in the dentate gyrus of the brain of the patients without manic depression, the neurons in the dentate gyrus of the brain of the patients are over excited, that is, they are more likely to be stimulated In the new study, gage's team examined different types of neurons using more in-depth probes than before to see if the results applied to different brain regions They isolated CA3 pyramidal neurons from six people with bipolar disorder, three of whom responded to lithium therapy In previous studies, neurons in the dentate gyrus of the brain in all manic depression patients were overexcited In the new study, only CA3 neurons from patients who responded to lithium drugs were always overexcited The team looked more closely at CA3 neurons from drug responders and found that the number of potassium channels in these cells was higher than usual, and the potassium current through these channels was stronger Scientists have shown that increased potassium currents are responsible for the hyperactivity of CA3 neurons When they treated cells with potassium channel blockers, the signals of hyperactivity disappeared The team is planning to further study what happens to large neural networks during hyperactivity waves to see if these changes may drive the symptoms of bipolar disorder Source of information: alternative potassium levels in circuits may cause mood swings in bipolar discorder source: Shani stern et al, mechanisms understanding the hyperactivity of CA3 and dentate gyrus hippocamporal neurons derived from patients with bipolar discorder, Biological Psychology (2019) Doi: 10.1016/j.biopsychh.2019.09.018