Bipolar disorder

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Dr.

Fields said that these phenomena implied that the cells forming myelin must somehow sense electrical impulse activity in neurons and regulate myelination accordingly.

To conduct their study, Dr.

Fields and his coworkers isolated neurons from mouse brains and grew them in laboratory cultures with two other kinds of brain cells, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes.

Previous studies had determined that oligodendrocytes deposit myelin on neurons, but how electrical impulse activity might stimulate them to do so was unknown.

In their laboratory cultures, the researchers stimulated the neurons by passing an electrical current through them.

This electrical stimulation was designed to mimic the normal activity that takes place in the brain when neurons communicate with each other.

The researchers found that the electrical stimulation caused the neurons to release adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a high-energy molecule essential to many biological processes.

In this instance, however, the ATP bound to special sites, or receptors, on the surface of the astrocytes, causing them to release a substance known as leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF).

LIF, in turn, bound to the oligodendrocytes, stimulating those cells to deposit myelin around the neurons.

Dr.

Fields explained that the finding has implications for disorders affecting myelination, such as Alexander disease, which is a fatal neurological disorder of childhood caused by a genetic defect in astrocytes.

The brains...

...ba href=/bipolar disorder/a/b, a long-term brain illness that causes unusual, severe shifts in mood, energy and ability to function.

The disorder, which affects more than 2 million U.S.

adults, must be carefully managed.

When it is not, or when it cannot be because, as often happens, patients do not take the medicine that helps smooth their emotional peaks and valleys, families unravel, careers implode and life may turn violent, even deadly.

Bipolar patient Rigoberto Alpizar had not been taking his medicine last December when he allegedly made bomb threats aboard a plane.

Federal air marshals shot him to death on the plane at Miami International Airport.

In January, another bipolar patient, Troy Anthony Rigby, jumped from the cabin door of a plane in Fort Lauderdale and ran toward a terminal.

Authorities stopped him with a Taser gun.

He later died after a heart attack.

Rigby's sister said he had not been taking his medicine.

"It's a very sad disease," says Pardo, 57, an addictions counselor who lives in Kendall, Fla.

A petite woman with short, red-streaked hair who projects a compelling, often amazing sense of calm, Pardo is a recovering alcoholic who has been dry for two decades, and a two-time divorcee after marriages riddled with physical abuse and emotional instability.

It took her years, she says, to understand that the definition of her life was "trauma all the time," to reach "a point where I knew I couldn't make it better." Pardo's older son, Eric, now 36, was diagnosed with bipol...

...ba href=/bipolar disorder/a/b, and in Morgan Cameron she had a daughter who was the great calming influence in her life.

"Even at 36, she called me twice a day.

She always found the time," Massoni said.

"If she sensed I was uptight, we'd talk and she'd try to slow me down.

'Take it easy, Mom,' she'd say.

'Read a book for a while, or have a snack.' She'd help when I was feeling down, too." At 57, Massoni thinks about the rest of her life without Morgan, and her sadness fills the room.

Parents aren't supposed to grow old without their children.

"My future has been taken away from me, and let's not even talk about what was taken from Morgan," Massoni said.

"It would be nice to know that if I ever have to go into a nursing home that my daughter would be able to come and visit me, but that can't happen.

It would be nice if I could be a grandmother, but that can never happen either.

She would have made a wonderful mother.

I know that because she was such a wonderful daughter." When Massoni was thinking about enrolling in a doctoral program in English at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Morgan encouraged her.

And even at that distance, Massoni received her two calls a day and an occasional weekend visit.

She has completed her coursework for her degree.

Now she needs to finish her dissertation.

Originally her thesis was to be stories about her family, but Morgan's death changed that, and now she is writing poems about her daughter.

Sometimes Massoni wears a T-shirt with Morgan's pi...