What does BiPolar fundamentally mean?

For example, multiple sclerosis, is a syndrome where there are instances of multiple "sclerosis", which are lesions on the cns.

Scelerosis = Lesion

Multiple Sclerosis = Multiple Lesions

What does BiPolar mean? Is everyone else a single pole? Is it specifically in reference to the electrical activity in the brain?

I have looked for this fundamental meaning a few times, but it seems that this syndrome being as old as it is, has become extremely convoluted, and any explanation which is straightforward and bio-logically mechanical seems to be elusive.

Thank you if you have any leads or the answer.

Bipolar was originally called manic depression, so there would be your two poles -- mania and depression. Nowadays major depression is also called unipolar depression as despite looking very similar it's actually a different thing from bipolar depression. Well, that's how I understand it as a non-expert

See, I understand that explaination, but I keep wondering if it has anything to do with the poles in the brain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_of_c ... emispheres

The anterior end of the hemisphere is named the frontal pole. (See also frontal lobe.)

The posterior end is named the occipital pole. (See also occipital lobe.)

The anterior end of the temporal lobe, the temporal pole. (See also temporal lobe.)

If those are the only poles, then perhaps everyone by nature is tri-polar?

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bipolar

bipolar (adj.)
"having two poles," from bi- + polar; 1810 with figurative sense of "of double aspect;" 1859 with reference to physiology. Psychiatric use in reference to what had been called manic-depressive psychosis is said to have begun 1957 with German psychiatrist Karl Leonhard. The term became popular early 1990s. Bipolar disorder was in DSM III (1980).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiology

Physiology (/ˌfɪziˈɒlədʒi/; from Ancient Greek φύσις (physis), meaning "nature, origin", and -λογία (-logia), meaning "study of"[1]) is the scientific study of normal function in living systems.[2] A sub-discipline of biology, its focus is in how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system.[3]

So perhaps with the term rooted in physiology there may be a biological meaning to the word as opposed to an abstract psychological view.

However that would mean that some type of neuro imaging technology was at use during that time frame. So I go to look and curiously, the earliest known brain imaging was in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... in_imaging

The very first chapter of the history of neuroimaging traces back to the Italian neuroscientist Angelo Mosso who invented the 'human circulation balance', which could non-invasively measure the redistribution of blood during emotional and intellectual activity.[1]

However, even if only briefly mentioned by William James in 1890, the details and precise workings of this balance and the experiments Mosso performed with it have remained largely unknown until the recent discovery of the original instrument as well as of Mosso’s reports by Stefano Sandrone and colleagues.[2]

However, Mosso's manuscripts have remained largely unknown for more than a century

So I do wonder, if perhaps there is significant changes in blood flow into different areas of the brain during bipolar episodes?

I'm thinking that perhaps maybe nobody knows the true origins of the words bipolar, but perhaps there was an era where upper echelon psychologists and biologists were throwing the term around way way before hand.


If that's the case, I know exactly which lobe (pole) of mine is under performing. My temporal lobe, and I know this based on the sensation of pressure in my head during high blood pressure events.


So if that is right, you could have bipolars who are inefficient in 3 different sections, leading to 3 diferent classes of bipolars, and you could say the same about unipolars.

So, technically if this is remotely true, there should be 6 different distinct patterns, more or less, of depressions. If one lobe or two is consistently depressed and it is not cycling (for lacks of better terms) from one or two poles to others. You know, because there is certainly a possibility that blood flow is somehow moderated or controlled in a way which leads to uneven circulation at times, and nothing more than that, and maybe that is related to bio-electrical signals or something. I dunno for sure.

Which freaks me out further more, because now "depression" takes on a whole new meaning, if it is strictly a low blood pressure event in one or two of the lobes.

I've even been feeling these pressures on the front of my head, which when I was delusional, of course I thought I was being mind controlled through a chakra or something, and later I thought it might be my nasal passages, but maybe it is a unipolar pressure, or a bipolar depression in the occular and temporal areas?

So, now I will pay attention to my visual acuity next time I feel pressure in my frontal lobe / forehead only.

BTW, yesterday I tried some aromatherapy, (genuine cold pressed rosewood, not easy to find) and remarkably the sensation in my brain was very noticeable and across primarily my temporal pole. I don't know if that means anything, I'm only writing down in case I forget.

Anyways, warning, rant ahead. I'm at a cross roads with what is best for my brain health.

I'm convinced that bee propolis ingestion absolutely changed my condition from that of being relatively in remission to epileptic/bipolar. I can feel pressure effects in my head, and some of the medications I've taken in the past suggest that I could now have calcium influx issues, but immuno boosting supplements reduce my epileptic condition, and so on. It is all a big mess. I can't figure out if I am immuno compromised, if I am suffering a mechanical issue with blood flow, and so on... hell I can't even tell if epileptic activity is immuno positive or negative.

This blood pressure thing makes alot of sense, and if it's true, I even remember after copious amounts of bee propolic ingestion hearing cracking, as if a thin layer of hard resin was inside my head. No lie. However, I could be hallucinating. However if not, just a little gunk up in my brain could cause drastic issues with vasoconstriction, and so on. It all sounds impossible, but I consistently read so many things on the internet that are just wrong. The stuff came straight from a bee keeper, and the bees use the stuff to incase invading bacterias, so in a worst case, I could be immuno compromised with some rare virus or something, but another possibility is that immuno boosting medicines are really doing nothing more than attacking resins to free them loose. Exactly what could genuinely be happening with half the autoimmune diseases out there, imo. It's a mess.

So... now I am starting to believe that bipolar means something bio-logical and over the ages the meaning of it has been twisted distorted and lost in time.

What will really upset me is if I discover that unipolar depression terminology is as old as bipolar terminology and has recently made a resurgence in the same vein.

I just can't find the straight forward answers on the web that there really should be with bipolar given it's widespread occurance.


At the very least it seems to be that researchers have linked high blood pressure with bipolar. So now my only question is, is there a pole in the brain with is depressed, and the body is simply kicking into overdrive to deliver blood to an area of the brain which is not getting enough blood supply?





RESEARCHER IDENTIFIES LINKS BETWEEN HYPERTENSION, BIPOLAR DISORDERS

http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2010/resea ... disorders/

Nearly half of patients hospitalized with bipolar disorder may suffer from hypertension, and the younger a person is diagnosed with the psychiatric condition the more likely they are to develop high blood pressure, according to a recent Michigan State University study.

What I am semi-confident about is that there is probably few if any imaging studies which monitor the blood pressure to the various poles in the brain, in a way which mimicks the Italian doctor from the 1800s method.

Actually, this may be the technology that is of interest.

http://www.sevencounties.org/poc/view_d ... 11207&cn=4

While PET and SPECT focus on metabolic rates to determine neurological activity levels, fMRI technology yields information by measuring blood flow within the brain. Magnets exploit the natural magnetic properties of blood (blood cells contain iron) allowing an image to be produced on a computer telling researchers which areas of the brain have the highest and lowest blood flows. These imaging technologies make it possible to create real-time movies documenting the functions of the various parts of the brain. Brain parts that consume more oxygen and sugar are working harder than other brain parts.

Difference Between MRI and fMRI

http://www.differencebetween.net/techno ... -and-fmri/

an MRI is helpful for discovering unnoticed anatomical anomalies caused by a disease process or traumatic event. It is a utility used for grand research in determining structural differences and a behavior correlation. On the other hand, functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, is a one of the highlights of the MRI technology wherein it functions through blood flow or blood oxygen level measurements to achieve the brain’s functional image.

In general, an MRI and fMRI differ from each other in a way that an MRI views the anatomical structure while an fMRI views the metabolic function.

https://brainchemist.wordpress.com/2010 ... epression/

I don't understand the technology in full at this point, but even looking at this, it looks to me as if these maps are showing bipolars at the bottom row, and they have more blood pressure happening at the frontal pole and occipital pole compared to the temporal pole. (at least one or two of them)



At the very least they seem different, but I have no idea how they collect the information to highlight.


Anyways, this is what the wiki says on the Italian brain imaging person.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... in_imaging

Remarkably, Angelo Mosso unearthed and investigated several critical variables that are still relevant in modern neuroimaging such as the ‘signal-to-noise ratio', the appropriate choice of the experimental paradigm and the need for the simultaneous recording of differing physiological parameters.[2]

Anyways, this is what his device looks like.

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content ... ain.awt091

Moreover, although it is still in existence, and despite its proven ability to measure blood volume changes in various organs (e.g. lungs, feet and hands), Mosso’s original balance (Fig. can no longer be used for experimental purposes. Accordingly, we cannot prove directly that it was actually capable of measuring alterations of cerebral blood flow during emotional and cognitive tasks.

To play devils advocate, I'm sure they don't even know if that was the only device.

Angelo Mosso’s initial claim was that local brain blood flow is intimately related to brain function

Last post for a bit...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Mosso

Angelo Mosso (30 May 1846 - 24 November 1910)

He was born in Turin, studied medicine there and in Florence, Leipzig, and Paris, and was appointed professor of pharmacology (1876) and professor of physiology (1879) at Turin.[3]

So, maybe he mastered the work which another pioneered a couple decades before him?

I only mention because the origins of bipolar from a physiological sense are reported to have originated in 1859.

He would have had to have been 13 years old when the word was first recorded in use.

...and bipolar in reference to physiology could be something other than in reference to the brain. Maybe the two poles of a heart or something.

also, I think it might be fair to say that back then, due to a lack of medical treatments, that perhaps bipolar patients selected for any experiments were probably extreme by todays standards, but that is only a guess.


doesn't seem to be much on his father...

http://advan.physiology.org/content/30/2/51

ANGELO MOSSO [1846–1910 (Fig. 1)] was born in Turin, Itay, on May 30th, 1846, and raised at Chieri, within the province of Turin, during the years after the Unification of Italy (1861). Because of family financial difficulties, he spent many of his childhood and schooling years working with his father, from whom he inherited his manual dexterity while acquiring a passion for constructing instruments (2–4).

He did make alot of devices however... whether his father was making similar devices, I don't know.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23537264

In 1898, Angelo Mosso (1846-1910) used his low-pressure chambers to carry out some remarkable experiments that are not well known.

Go back and look at the simplicity of the definition of Multiple Sclerosis you gave in your first note.
Now think of bipolar in similar terms. Bi - two, polar - opposites. Mania and depression. It can be made much more complicated, but this is what it fundamentally means.

People with bipolar illness experience moods of mania and depression.

I'm struggling to follow most posts on this thread, except for skilsaw's. Kay Jamison writes “The clinical reality of manic-depressive illness is far more lethal and infinitely more complex than the current psychiatric nomenclature, bipolar disorder, would suggest".

I think I have plenty of sub-clinical-threshold periods that Kay Jamison discusses. I have days when I excuse myself several times from company to jump around the bathroom because I get so restless during a perfectly pleasant meal with friends. It didn't meet any DSM criteria but do you think that is normal behaviour? I don't. And I simply DO NOT sleep before 1 or 2am. I have 5hrs sleep maximum on a good night, work a 13-hr day and feel far better than if I'd slept 8hrs. This was never the case with the old me.

I don't understand the idea of there being actual, physical poles in the brain. Nor do I believe that it is a simple case of one being either super-exuberant for at least 7 days and then suicidally depressed for at least 14 days. This time period is arbitrary and is under constant review and receives frequent criticisms from experts in the field.

Being high, for example, doesn't automatically mean one is exuberant and happy - aggression, agitation and restless pacing can indicate either mania or depression.

Asking what bipolar means is an endless subject. There's a chemical element so it is physical. There's a feedback mechanism into the emotions so it is psychological. And management strategies are heavily dependent on social circumstances so it is also environmental.

In essence, I think the term bipolar is more accurate than manic depression. It isn't the perfect term to describe the disorder but in the absence of alternatives, it will suffice for now. I think bipolar means that our energy states oscillate too high or too low. If you'd rather use a mechanical analogy, our body is a car, life is a road - and we have faulty brakes. Speeding down the highway when the brakes fail can be a thrill until the cops (sorry, psych team) catch us or we crash. Sometimes the brakes get stuck and we can only trudge along, becoming more and more frustrated while friends, family and opportunities zip past us which makes us feel even worse. Think of Dick Dastardly gnashing his teeth while Penelope Pitstop glides effortlessly past. Double drat!!

I'm digressing so I'll just say one more thing. Your question is profound and I cannot do it justice. Why not re-word it and ask yourself this: "What does being bipolar fundamentally mean to me?"

skilsaw wrote:Go back and look at the simplicity of the definition of Multiple Sclerosis you gave in your first note.
Now think of bipolar in similar terms. Bi - two, polar - opposites. Mania and depression. It can be made much more complicated, but this is what it fundamentally means.

People with bipolar illness experience moods of mania and depression.

Understood, and yeah, it could be that simple, however people do agree that the term bipolar originated around 1854, or was presented offically, or is found in history books around 1854.

A Short History of Bipolar Disorder
The concept of bipolar disorder is surprisingly modern

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hi ... r-disorder

The modern psychiatric concept of bipolar disorder has its origins in the nineteenth century. In 1854, Jules Baillarger (1809–1890) and Jean-Pierre Falret (1794–1870) independently presented descriptions of the disorder to the Académie de Médicine in Paris. Baillarger called the illness folie à double forme (‘dual-form insanity’) whereas Falret called it folie circulaire (‘circular insanity’). Falret observed that the disorder clustered in families, and correctly postulated that it had a strong genetic basis.

Before that it was... melancholy and mania.

The idea of a relationship between melancholy and mania can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks, and particularly to Aretaeus of Cappadocia, who was a physician and philosopher in the time of Nero or Vespasian (first century AD). Aretaeus described a group of patients that who ‘laugh, play, dance night and day, and sometimes go openly to the market crowned, as if victors in some contest of skill’ only to be ‘torpid, dull, and sorrowful’ at other times. Although he suggested that both patterns of behaviour resulted from one and the same disorder, this idea did not gain currency until the modern era.

If anything seems absolute, the modern fMRI scans do show an increase in cerebral blood flow and pressure??? in various areas of the brain and researchers have linked hypertension with bipolar with high probability.

Whether that was discovered in the 1800s is unknown with me, but it does seem there was at least one Italian inventor which made a claim there was a connection between blood flow and emotional state, local to the brain.

Sometimes things are lost or obscured in history, a good example is Einsteins paranoia over the Bose and Einstein condensate. The story goes, he put his name on it, so it would be lost to time.

turnaround wrote:I don't understand the idea of there being actual, physical poles in the brain. Nor do I believe that it is a simple case of one being either super-exuberant for at least 7 days and then suicidally depressed for at least 14 days. This time period is arbitrary and is under constant review and receives frequent criticisms from experts in the field.

I don't either, and that is why the concept of poles may be nothing more than reference points for measurement or discussion. However, what are those things that were discussed? It survives in Grays Anatomy which is an extremely popular and official/authoritative book on biology.

Tbh, before yesterday, I thought maybe poles was in reference to some bio-electrical signal, but this blood pressure, blood flow thing, seems more probable, if there is any truth to it at all.

I am simply looking for the biological or physiological origins, or fundamental meaning of the word. Medicine is notorious for using latin and greek nonclementure, and preserving terminologies throughout millenniums. Normally there is very specific meaning with the words used that can be traced back in time.


Anyways, Grey's Anatomy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray%27s_Anatomy

The book is widely regarded as an extremely influential work on the subject, and has continued to be revised and republished from its initial publication in 1858 to the present day. The 40th edition of the book was published in 2008, the year of its 150th anniversary.[1]

What type of measurement system would one expect with a system that perhaps measures on an xyz axis as is probably what the Italian inventor was doing to a certain degree. I mean what good are poles if they reference nothing? I dunno absolutely for sure. It was probably tilt, inclination, and something else, instead of xyz that we use so commonly in 3d imaging.

Honestly, truly, bluntly, I think you're unnecessarily tying yourself in knots here. It means nothing more than the proposition that people with bipolar go from one extreme pole (high) to the other (low). And that's all there is to it. The "poles" are mere analogies meant to illustrate the extremity of mood swings.