I don't believe in holistic treatment, but just maybe...

“Bipolar disorder, we now believe, isn’t a disease of too much or too little serotonin or dopamine. It is not about the ‘chemical soup’ of neurotransmitters in the brain, but rather it is about synaptic and neural plasticity.”

“What we’ve learned in the last 10 years is that whether we’re talking about memory or mood or movement, all advanced brain functions involve changes in the ability to convey information between synapses in different circuits.”

These quotes from Dr. Husseini Manji appear in an article written about new treatments of bipolar disorder. The primary supposition is that mood disorders are concerned with the synaptic plasticity of the brain rather than the excess or lack of certain neurochemicals. He believes that the shrinkage or atrophy of neurons makes communication across the synapses between them much more difficult, if not impossible. Considering the difficulties I've been having with verbal recall lately, this seems like a reasonable explanation.

Although I'm definitely not an expert in neuroscience, it also makes sense to me that the effects of this atrophy or shrinkage depend on the specific neurons being affected. The hope of finding ways to reverse, or at least halt the intellectual problems I've been having has led me to spend a substantial amount of time researching neuroscience and one of the many things I've learned so far is that neurons can be classified as to whether they perform sensory or motor functions. Mood disorders, then, would be a result of the degeneration of sensory neurons. The delusions, leaps of logic, irritability and psychosis all seem to me as if they'd fall under the jurisdiction of sensory neurons. 

I just wish that there was some way to harness the good parts of my mania and prevent the crash that happens when it's over. I think I will eventually see if I can decrease my dosage and try to control the negative aspects of my disorder with cognitive behavioral therapy. Before I became a Depakote zombie, the neurons of mine that are not atrophied worked exceptionally well. I would like to have that back, please!