No Blank Faces

Posted on May 31, 2006 in Bipolar Disorder

This story explains a lot:

A U.S. study shows youths with bipolar disorder misread facial expressions as hostile and show heightened neural reactions when focusing on neutral faces.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health say their study provides some of the first clues to the underlying workings of the episodes of mania and depression that disrupt friendships, school, and family life in up to 1 percent of children.

Brain scans showed that the left amygdala, a fear hub, and related structures, activated more in youths with the disorder than in healthy youths when asked to rate the hostility of an emotionally neutral face, as opposed to a non-emotional feature, such as nose width.

The more patients misinterpreted the faces as hostile, the more their amygdala flared.

Such a face-processing deficit could help account for the poor social skills, aggression, and irritability that characterizes the disorder in children, suggest Drs. Ellen Leibenluft, Brendan Rich, Daniel Pine and colleagues

My wife and I used to have these conversations: “Jojo doesn’t like me. She’s mad.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No, she is. Just look at her face.”

“Her face looks, well, normal to me. She doesn’t look mad or glad.”

“What’s wrong with you, can’t you see it? She’s mad. I must have said something to her.”

Sigh.

I am relieved to see a study which demonstrates that there is a biochemical basis for this peculiar type of paranoia. And knowing that it is there makes my life easier: Hmmmm. Jojo looks mad. Let’s take a closer look at that face. Do her features really say that she is mad?” I may not be able to prevent the initial thought but I can control how I act on it.

What about other people with bipolar disorder out there. Have you had the problem of reading more into a facial expression than was actually there?