Pilot Study of Neuromodulation for Enhancement of Emotion Regulation in Bipolar Mood Disorders

Emotion dysregulation contributes to the development and maintenance of a wide range of psychopathology, but is especially relevant for individuals with bipolar mood disorders (BD). These individuals experience severe and episodic emotion dysregulation associated with maladaptive functioning, interpersonal problems, decreased work productivity, and suicidal ideation and behavior. To date, both pharmacological and psychosocial treatments fail to normalize emotion dysregulation for many bipolar patients. As a consequence, all too many experience poor outcomes. Thus, there is a significant need for new innovative approaches to target and improve emotion dysregulation in bipolar patients. Non-invasive neuromodulation using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) may provide a viable strategy to help improve emotion dysregulation in bipolar mood disorders. As a first step to test this hypothesis, the current proposal seeks to experimentally identify specific neural target sites for improving emotion regulation using TMS. If the investigators can demonstrate target engagement of emotion regulation at the behavioral level using TMS, this will provide an important first step towards examining the potential utility of TMS as a viable strategy to help improve emotion dysregulation in bipolar mood disorders. While this is not a definitive clinical trial, the sham-controlled double-crossover design of this study will provide valuable information for target site selection for the development of TMS as an intervention strategy to improve emotion dysregulation in BD.