Building a neurobiological framework to elucidate neural mechanisms, aid early risk detection, and develop new...

This article describes the progress that my colleagues and I have made over the last two decades in building a clinical neuroscience research program in Bipolar Disorder (BD). Here, we have focused on key research themes to ultimately help with early risk detection and the development of better treatments for individuals with BD. We have described the main areas that we are pursuing, namely, understanding the underlying neural mechanisms of BD and BD risk, differentiating BD and BD risk from depressive disorder risk, and the development of new treatments for individuals with BD. We conclude with a summary of future directions in our research that include examination of the molecular and metabolic abnormalities associated with neural network abnormalities underlying mania/hypomania risk, testing neural risk markers in independent samples stratified according to familial risk for BD, and the study of early infant and child neurodevelopmental processes that confer risk for affective disorders, including BD, in order to elucidate early neural risk markers.