Skip to main content

REVIEW article

Front. Psychiatry

Sec. Mood Disorders

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1552992

This article is part of the Research Topic The Role of Affect Regulation in Bipolar Disorders View all 4 articles

Underlying biological mechanisms of emotion dysregulation in Bipolar Disorder

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
  • 2 University of Oxford, Oxford, England, United Kingdom
  • 3 Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust, Coventry, United Kingdom
  • 4 Birmingham Women's NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, United Kingdom
  • 5 Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Difficulties with emotion regulation (ER) are a key feature of Bipolar Disorder (BD) contributing to poor psychosocial and functional outcomes. Abnormalities within emotion processing and regulation thus provide key targets for treatment strategies and have implications for treatment response. Although biological mechanisms and ER are typically studied independently, emergent findings in BD research suggest that there are important ties between biological mechanisms and the disturbances in ER observed in BD. Therefore, in this narrative review, we provide an overview of the literature on biological mechanisms underlying emotional dysregulation in BD including genetic and epigenetic mechanisms, neuroimaging findings, inflammation, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysfunction, neuroplasticity and brainderived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and circadian rhythm disturbances. Finally, we discuss the clinical relevance of the findings and provide future directions for research. The continued exploration of underlying biological mechanisms in ED in BD may not only elucidate fundamental neurobiological mechanisms but also foster advancements in current treatment strategies and the development of novel targeted treatments.

    Keywords: Bipolar Disorder, Emotion Regulation, biological, mechanisms, Underlying

    Received: 29 Dec 2024; Accepted: 28 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Durdurak, Morales Muñoz, de Cates, Wiseman, Broome and Marwaha. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Buse Beril Durdurak, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

    Research integrity at Frontiers

    Man ultramarathon runner in the mountains he trains at sunset

    95% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good

    Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.


    Find out more