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Q: "Extremely Bright" & Bipolar Disorder
My 10 year old has a history of epilepsy. Three years ago she had
significant neurocognitive decline after a normal bacterial infection.
She finally returned to normal and then relasped after a viral infection.
PET scans showed that broad sections of the cingulate gyrus and the right
frontal lobe had slowed significantly. (Spiking also occurs in right frontal
lobe.) She now has an IVIG every 28 days, and we had seen remarkable results.
My 15 year old has just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Both girls
are extremely bright with test scores above the 99th%. Are the two
conditions possibly related, or is it just a strange coincidence that I have two
children with brains that don't function normally?
Dear Ms. H' --
You're certainly right to wonder. You've probably learned that bipolar disorder
and epilepsy seem to have a great deal in common: anticonvulsants work in each;
sleep deprivation makes both worse; alcohol makes both worse; both have
genetically transmissible susceptibility; head injuries are associated with
both, etc.
"Extremely bright" is also associated with bipolar
disorder, at least in a broad range of anecdotal literature: many websites
list "famous people" (e.g. enter bipolar famous people on
Google), really unusually creative people
like Beethoven and Abe Lincoln, who are thought to have had bipolar disorder --
with varying degrees of effort having been expended to be very certain about
this) and certainly in my experience with patients as well.
You know the imprecation "may you live in interesting
times" (which -- I just had to look it up re: origin -- has a very
odd history). I can imagine that at times you've felt you were on the
receiving end of something like "may you have very intelligent children". Thank
you for contributing their story to my databanks; the relationship between
infection and cognitive function in your younger is very odd, isn't it. Good
luck with handling these complex situations.
Dr. Phelps
Published January, 2005
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