Melissa Delbello
University of Cincinnati, OH·Neuroscience
Bipolar I disorder is defined by episodes of mania, periods of abnormally elevated mood and energy. Mania usually first appears in adolescence or young adulthood.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
- Topics
bipolar disorder
bipolar I disorder
mania
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Track four-year trajectories of ventral prefrontal network connectivity, brain circuits for mood and risk-reward processing, in youth with versus without a family history of bipolar I disorder.
- Test whether familial risk for bipolar I disorder and early life trauma interact to disrupt healthy development of ventral prefrontal brain networks during adolescence.
- Determine whether these combined risks lead to growing rates of mood symptoms, substance misuse, suicidal behaviors and approach motivation hypersensitivity over time.
More about the research
The illness runs strongly in families, with heritability near 85%. People with a family history of bipolar disorder also report more early life adversity, such as childhood trauma, which itself raises the risk of depression, substance use and suicide. These youth may therefore face a double risk. How inherited vulnerability and early stress combine to affect the developing brain is not known.
Why it matters
Learning how family history and childhood maltreatment together shape brain development could help explain how bipolar I disorder emerges. That knowledge may inform future efforts to prevent the illness or slow its progression in young people at familial risk or early in its course. It may also bear on related problems in these families, such as substance misuse and suicidal behavior.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Fabiano Nery
University of Cincinnati, OH·Medicine & Clinical Research
Measure how glutamate levels in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex change after 8 weeks of N-acetylcysteine (NAC) and/or mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in youth aged 15–24 with mild depression, using proton MR spectroscopy.
Chandra Sripada
University of Michigan, MI·Neuroscience
Test whether reduced efficiency of evidence accumulation in bipolar disorder comes from weaker flexible rewiring of brain networks, comparing 130 patients and 130 healthy adults with behavioral tasks and task-based neuroimaging.
Assaf Oshri
University of Georgia, GA·Psychology
Test whether changes in functional connectivity between cognitive control networks and emotion, reward and salience networks explain how early life adversity leads to drug-use vulnerability and drug use, using ABCD Study data on 11,883 youth.
The school
University of Cincinnati: 18 labs on PI Pages, $740M a year on research, 275 research doctorates a year.
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