Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Mood instability, defined as an emotional dysregulation, mood swings, or emotional impulsiveness, is a common feature of mood and anxiety disorders. Mood instability is associated with elevated risk of suicide and reduced treatment responsiveness in individuals with a psychiatric diagnosis. Considering its dynamic nature, traditional surveys that assess mood variability once a week or once a month may not be the best way to capture the complex picture of mood instability. Fortunately, with recent technological advances and mobile applications, it is now easy to collect, at random occasions in the day, all sorts of information from research participants such as symptoms or mood states in their everyday life. It is likely that mood instability reflects a dysfunction in the neural circuits of the brain, however, little is known regarding its associated brain mechanisms. Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain allows us to capture both static information, such as the structure of brain regions, and dynamic information, such as the connectivity between regions. In this research project, I propose to investigate whether abnormalities in the structure and connectivity of brain networks are related to mood fluctuations within the day, in order to disentangle the trait (static) and state (dynamic) signatures of mood instability.