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Conditioning and Sensitisation in the Longitudinal Course of Affective Illness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Robert M. Post ,
David R. Rubinow  and
James C. Ballenger
Robert M. Post*
Affiliation:
Biological Psychiatry Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, Building 10, Room 3N212, 9000 Rockville Pike. Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA
David R. Rubinow
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, USA
James C. Ballenger
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, USA
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

Few biological theories of manic-depressive illness have focused on the longitudinal course of affective dysfunction and the mechanisms underlying its often recurrent and progressive course. The authors discuss two models for the development of progressive behavioural dysfunction—behavioural sensitisation and electrophysiological kindling—as they provide clues to important clinical and biological variables relevant to sensitisation in affective illness. The role of environmental context and conditioning in mediating behavioural and biochemical aspects of this sensitisation is emphasised. The sensitisation models provide a conceptual approach to previously inexplicable clinical phenomena in the longitudinal course of affective illness and may provide a bridge between psychoanalytic/psychosocial and neurobiological formulations of manic-depressive illness.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 149 , Issue 2 , August 1986 , pp. 191 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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