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

情感障碍，如双相情感障碍被定义为由情感功能障碍引起或至少伴有情感功能障碍。然而，对双相情感障碍的情绪加工及其认知和神经元相关性的研究还不是很广泛。最近的神经影像学研究表明，双相情感障碍患者在处理情绪信息的大脑区域表现出结构性变化。此外，在与情绪相关的任务中，观察到大脑激活模式的改变，即皮层激活减少和皮层下大脑激活增加。到目前为止，还没有研究调查双相情感障碍患者的认知、结构和功能脑改变与遗传变异之间的关系。因此，本研究以多层次的方式探讨了情感处理在双相情感障碍中的作用。在两项研究中，20名身心健康的双相患者，即缓解型双相患者，20名双相患者的一级亲属和20名健康对照者将参加三种不同的认知实验范式（研究1）以及结构（弥散张量成像）和功能（fMRI）神经成像程序（研究2）。此外，计划在所有参与者中进行遗传分析，重点关注功能遗传多态性与不同大脑区域内情绪处理差异之间的联系。

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.