Mood, Mind, & Metabolism

Taylor Beck & Mariel Goddu

ABSTRACT

Psychiatric disease offers a window on the intimate link between mood and thought. The impact of emotion on cognition is presently ignored by most models in cognitive science and AI. However, it is dramatically evident in mania and depression--acute shifts in thinking style, mood state and metabolism that define bipolar illness.

In this project, we are conducting a large-scale review of the extant literature on bipolar disorder in order to develop a novel theoretical framework for empirical research on this disease. Contrary to existing and historical accounts that emphasize the distinctive psychiatric features of bipolar disorder, our view focuses on metabolic change as it relates to cognitive features like processing speed, expansiveness, openness, lateral-thinking, and goal orientation. Our approach aims to integrate findings from diverse areas of study (e.g., glucose metabolism, endocrine dysfunction, drug responsiveness, circadian rhythm, etc.) to develop a portrait of this disorder not as a “psychiatric disease,” but rather as a syndrome of the total organism.

In so doing, we aim not only to make a specific contribution to the literature on bipolar disorder, but also to advocate for a more general view of cognition as being inextricable from mood, metabolism, and milieu: the foundations of "mind" lie in our existential predicament as living organisms dependent on the environment to survive. We argue that the insights gleaned from bipolar disorder as a case study in the inextricability of mood, mind, and metabolism will provide a rich foundation for studying cognitive behavior in nonpathological populations--i.e., general individual cognitive differences between people and across time (same individual at different time slices).

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