• Question: Is there a link between mental illness’ and a specific side or part of the brain?

    Asked by anon-283004 on 8 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: Alex Baxendale

      Alex Baxendale answered on 8 Mar 2021:

      It really depends as a lot of mental illnesses are caused by very specific things – usually the chemicals our brains use! Too much or too little of the chemicals, such as Serotonin or Dopamine, can create some really tricky situations. For example, depression is caused by a lack of Serotonin, Parkinson’s disease is caused by a lack of Dopamine due to slow damage to a section of the brain called the ‘Substantia Nigra’ which is in the brainstem. Where not enough Dopamine is linked with Parkinson’s disease we can see that too much Dopamine is linked with Schizoprenia.
      These chemicals used by the brain help the different areas to communicate, and allow them to send specific types of messages. Mental illness has to come from somewhere, and the vast majority of the time it is due to problems with the chemicals the brain uses, which can be caused by damage to specific parts of the brain

    • Photo: Ioana Stanciu

      Ioana Stanciu answered on 8 Mar 2021: last edited 8 Mar 2021 1:09 pm

      The most obvious thing that comes to mind is Alzheimer’s disease, which is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder so by definition it causes gradual degeneration of the brain. For example, MRI studies did notice some medial temporal lobe volume loss. Patients with bipolar I disorder show a specific pattern of brain abnormalities in structural imaging in the temporal lobe, basal ganglia, and ventricular system.

      An interesting case that every psychology student loves is the one of Phineas Gage, a worker that got a metal rod through his frontal lobes and as a consequence his behaviour changed drastically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage#Mental_changes_and_brain_damage

      There are still investigating specific brain areas of mental health disorders for example for depression but what is more established is the relationship between mental health and neurotransmitters: for example, dopamine is associated with such things as addiction, Parkinson’s and schizophrenia while serotonin plays a role in mood disorders including depression and OCD.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 8 Mar 2021:

      Hi CharmainK ,

      Thank you for another great question! The answer to this question really can be applied to all mental illnesses! But for the sake of this question for ease and it being my area of research, I will focus on the concept of schizophrenia and the brain.
      There is not so much evidence (if at all) on right versus left brain in schizophrenia, more a whole brain approach. This can be separated into functionality and structural issues/abnormalities.
      So structural changes can be things like lack of grey matter (the stuff the brain is made up of) as well as different areas which in turn affect different things like memory of even hallucinations. These changes seem to get worse over time, though we are unsure which is causing which! There is some notion of ‘toxic’ effect of psychotic symptoms on the brain itself, though probably an unfortunate interaction of the two.
      Then there is functional issues with the brain, so the way its wired and how the chemicals work (or don’t work!). In schizophrenia we mostly look at dopamine, where there is too much, and this causes something called ‘aberrant salience hypothesis’. This essentially means that the person with psychosis attaches meaning to it that others don’t. So seeing lots of white cars or someone’s bag in the street has a face on it, can in this instance mean the person attaches meaning to it, that it is relevant to them i.e. the cars are following them.
      Together they come together (not without the mention of environmental factors!) to lead to schizophrenia – though there is still a long way to go to truly understand this fascinating and scary disorder!

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