This often results in me seeming standoffish or uninterested. I don’t want to seem like a jerk, but sometimes I simply shut down in conversation when I no longer have anything pleasant to say. I lose track of conversations in areas where there is a lot of external stimuli.īeing unable to connect to my loved ones when something is externally aggravating me is disheartening. Feeling overwhelmed and being unable to process through what is happening around me is disorienting and, sometimes, a bit scary. I feel overwhelmed, which might be where my frustration is rooted. How Does This Translate For Those of Us Who Have Bipolar Disorder? Finally, the left posterior forceps which is white matter that serves as connective tissue between the occipital lobes are impaired in manic patients. The right supramarginal gyrus, responsible for how we perceive the space were are in and move around in it (think depth perception but for your entire body), has decreased functionality for manic patients. The striatum and hippocampus, responsible for involuntary movement and memory retention, both showed impaired function for manic patients only. This might explain why my heart races and I receive what normal people would consider “fight or flight” signals when I am overstimulated. The cerebellar vermis, responsible for the regulation of heart rate and breathing, showed impaired functionality in depressed and manic patients. The thalamus, responsible for most of the sensory feedback and where our brain starts the processing of external stimuli, was functionally impaired in both lobes for depressed and manic participants, but only reflected single lobe impairment for bipolar patients in a euthymic state. In the visual areas of the brain (the occipital lobe) for both depressed and manic states showed decreased activity. Six areas of interest in the brain were identified in the study that was conducted with different stimuli. The conditions of understanding have changed and, as it turns out, we have a wide spectrum of feelings we are capable of, just like everyone else. This isn’t 1990, we aren’t just “manic-depressive”. A fact that, for me, is really disheartening. People living with bipolar are often categorized by what mood they are in at the time, rather than people being able to holistically see the personhood of the disease rather than the state.

The degree to which the impairment creates a noticeable change in mood or sensory outcome depends largely on the individual, rather than the state they are in. People with bipolar fundamentally have impaired states of perception and processing. Although when the bipolar subjects reported being euthymic (without mood disturbance), the results were closer to neurotypical subjects. Between the 3 studies states - depressed, manic and euthymic - there were no functional differences for bipolar patients compared to neurotypical control groups.

Interestingly, the mood states of study participants were tracked and the outcomes might surprise you. According to the findings “abnormal bioenergetics may underlie functional differences in brain activity and, taken together with the EEG findings suggest that disrupted brain function in bipolar disorder may occur on a more fundamental level than previously thought, impairing both sensory processing and perception”. The body of evidence is not large, but it is growing as researchers try to solve some of the mysteries surrounding psychiatric disturbances and basic function.Ī study in 2018 focuses on brain imaging and spectrometry testing to try and solve the puzzle.

“Why can’t you just sit down and enjoy a meal?” Because eating with other people makes me unfriendly. My wife recently figured me out, when I eat quickly and get up to do the dishes before everyone else is done it is often to avoid hearing the person next to me chewing and smacking their lips. You might assume, at face value, that I’m just rude when I leave the table or try to overtalk the sound. Smacking your lips while chewing your gum, swallowing your drink audibly, dragging your utensil across your teeth all result in the same level of overt frustration for me. I am unable to manifest any patience for this sound and become almost immediately irritable. The rest of the conversation is a backdrop. My bipolar brain, however, hyper focuses on the sound with such precision that it becomes the only sound I can hear. Most neurotypical folks would maybe think “bad manners” and move on. Imagine eating dinner and you can hear someone next to you chewing. Some days are easier than others, but one of the constants is how irritable I become about specific noises. I have been diagnosed with bipolar II for 15 years. Sensory processing issues and bipolar disorder are not new territories.

Auditory sensory overload