Kognitive und neuronale Korrelate der emotionalen Verarbeitung bei Patienten mit bipolaren Störungen sowie deren Verwandte ersten Grades und gesunden Kontrollprobanden

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Affective disorders, such as bipolar disorders are conceptualized as being caused or at least accompanied by dysfunctions of emotion. However, research on emotional processing and its cognitive and neuronal correlates in bipolar disorder has not been very extensive. Recent neuroimaging studies suggested that bipolar patients exhibit structural changes in brain areas relevant to the processing of emotional information. Furthermore, altered brain activation patterns, i.e. decreased cortical and increased subcortical brain activation were observed during emotion-related tasks. So far, no study investigated the relation between cognitive, structural and functional brain alterations and genetic variations in bipolar patients. The present study therefore examines the role of emotional processing in bipolar disorders in a multi-level approach. In two studies 20 euthymic, i.e. remitted bipolar patients, 20 first-grade relatives of bipolar patients and 20 healthy controls will participate in three different cognitive experimental paradigms (study 1) as well as structural (diffusion tensor imaging) and functional (fMRI) neuroimaging procedures (study 2). In addition, genetic analysis focusing on the link between functional genetic polymorphisms and differences in emotional processing within distinct brain regions is planned to be performed in all participants.