In an experiment that had people with bipolar disorder playing roulette, brain scans revealed that the ‘reward centers’ of their brains were activated more than those of people without the psychiatric disorder formerly known as manic depression.

The research, published in the journal Brain, used functional MRI scans to monitor the response of a part of the brain known to be involved in reward and pleasure, the nucleus accumbens.

This center drives us to make decisions that bring satisfying short-term results, but was shown to be more active in response to risk-taking in the people with bipolar disorder, report the neuroscientists from the UK’s universities of Manchester and Liverpool.

Prof. Wael El-Deredy, a cognitive neuroscientist from the University of Manchester, says there are upsides and downsides to this response for people living with bipolar. He says:

“The greater buzz that people with bipolar disorder get from reward is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it helps people strive towards their goals and ambitions, which may contribute to the success enjoyed by many people with this diagnosis. However, it comes at a cost: these same people may be swayed more by immediate rewards when making decisions and less by the long-term consequences of these actions.”

The brains with bipolar disorder showed that another, less primitive area of the brain also gave a different response. The prefrontal cortex, highly developed in humans and associated with our ability to give conscious thought, was more effective at guiding the impulses of the study participants who did not have bipolar disorder, “towards safe gambles and away from risky ones.”

This part of the brain for the control subjects was better able to temper desire for immediately rewarding decisions, in favor of maximizing overall results.

Prof. Richard Bentalla, an expert in psychology at the University of Liverpool, says: “This study shows how we can use the new tools of neuroscience to better understand the psychological mechanisms that lead to a psychiatric disorder which, until now, has been very difficult to understand.”

Dr. Liam Mason, a psychologist from the Manchester team who now works at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, says the research revelations will inform the scientific pursuit of treatments.

“Understanding how the brain works to regulate the pursuit of goals will help us to design, evaluate and monitor better therapies for bipolar disorder,” he says.