title: Brain complexity increases in mania.
abstract: An important challenge in measuring whole brain activation is to develop a measure that could distinguish between normal and abnormal mood states. The application of chaos theory and non-linear dynamics to problems in biological sciences has resulted in a growing body of advancements and the notion of brain as a complex, non-linear system has attracted physicists, mathematicians, biologists and psychologists alike. To search for a correlation between alterations in chaotic brain states and mood disorders, we compared the fractal dimension of the electroencephalographic (EEG) signal in patients going through a manic episode of bipolar mood disorder (BMD) type I to a control group of healthy adults and showed that the EEG fractal dimension is significantly augmented in our patients. Thus, for the first time, we draw a clear objective distinction between normal and abnormal mood and associated brain states.
authors.affiliation: Roozbeh Psychiatry Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. bbahrami@ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Bahador
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bahrami
authors.forename: Reza
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Seyedsadjadi
authors.forename: Baktash
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Babadi
authors.forename: Maryam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Noroozian
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male