Watching brain systems in action

The driving goal of this project is to provide a method to distinguish between bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder (MDD). Although the initial symptoms may be similar, there are often dire consequences of treating bipolar disease with drugs intended for MDD. The brain circuitry for these two disorders is thought to be different, and understanding these differences may provide the basis for a marker that distinguishes the two. In particular, this project leverages multi-modal human neuroimaging to explore and develop new concepts in healthy and diseased brain function. Receognizing that these goals are ambitious and will require at least a decade to accomplish, we are now addressing two initial goals: (1) characterizing the neurotransmitters (neural signals) involved in recovering from MDD, by comparing the neurotransmitters involved in responding to drugs and responding to placebo. (2) understanding brain function in other diseses (Huntington’s Disease) and how this information could be used to provide a marker of disease and progression

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