Lithium Carbonate

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Does lithium carbonate affect memory and cognition? If so why? I also heard it can cause neurogenesis in certain regions of the brain.

Not sure how lithium affects cognition and memory. I'm fairly sure that having bipolar disorder affects cognition and memory, even between episodes.

As for neurogenesis, I'm not sure about that either, but my doc did say something about Lithium allowing the brain to heal. Lithium is meant to have a protective effect against further episodes.

Either way I've been stable on it for two years now. Yay!

Yes, lithium may affect memory and cognition. And yes, it has the ability to induce neurogenesis in certain brain regions, mainly by increasing the amount of BDNF. It is currently thought that the neurogenesis effects may be why lithium works so well in preventing bipolar suicide. Lithium's neurotrophic effects are also being looked at as treatments for certain neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's.

As for its effects on memory and cognition, some people find that their mind feels "slow" on lithium, but this is a small proportion of those who take it for bipolar disorder. Several studies have looked at whether or not lithium significantly affects memory/cognition, and most findings show that bipolar patients usually feel just as mentally sharp, creative, and productive (if not more so) on lithium as they do without medication. For those who do feel sluggish and "slow" on lithium, other treatments are available, of course. But just because this is a possible side effect of lithium does not mean that it occurs nearly as frequently as it often is made out to be. Besides, looking at medicated bipolar patients' memory scores have the confound that bipolar disorder and other neuropsych disorders tend to decrease performance on working memory/executive function tests to begin with. So, it's often hard to pinpoint if this is a result of the medication or a result of the natural course of the disorder.

Why does lithium sometimes affect cognition and memory? Well, that isn't very well studied or known at this point. In some people who feel "slow" on lithium, it may simply be because of the fact that they are used to racing thoughts during hypomania/mania, which lithium would put a halt on. If you're interested in how lithium is hypothesized to work as an anti-manic agent in general, there have been lots of recent findings. Lithium seems to do a lot of things in the brain, including decreasing mitochondrial excitotoxicity, decreasing levels of glucocorticoids, increasing levels of BDNF and neurogenesis (as stated above), and slowing second messenger/G protein signaling pathways. An NMR study from this year showed how lithium's main anti-manic action appears to be the inhibition of the enzyme IPPase in the phosphatidylinositol pathway.

If you're really, really interested in the specific biochemistry, go on PubMed and look up journal articles by Manji. Feel free to ask me more questions, too. This is my area of specialty.

I am also grateful for this explanation. I'm not sure I'm bipolar actually, but maybe I get a little bit bipolar 2ish when I'm under a lot of stress. It does run in the family, too. I have been under a lot of stress lately and I couldn't foresee that getting better anytime very soon so I mentioned to my psychiatrist that I would be interested in trying a low dose of it and he said that might be a good idea and it was neuroprotective or something too. I didn't realize it could help the brain so much and that was exactly what I needed!

It doesn't seem to slow my thinking down (I'm on a pretty low dose because I tend to overreact to meds in general) but it does seem to make me get tired a little more easily. That's not a bad thing because I have major insomnia problems. Mostly it seems to work like anti-anxiety medication for me, which is cool because real anti-anxiety meds never have worked for me. So I am under a ton of stress right now, but getting sleep and not anxious thanks to the lithium, and I don't think I've had a single headache since I've been on it. I still get upset...but I have real life reasons to be upset, and at least I know it doesn't have anything to do with a mood disorder being untreated because we've got that base covered. It's also not a time in my life I could afford to wonder if purchases or decisions were hypomanic or not. Really, the addition of the lithium was a perfect decision for this time in my life. I don't have to second guess myself all the time, and that's really kind of priceless for a medication that is just a salt and could easily be considered a mineral supplement (and is, in many places). And if it's healing my brain too? That's wonderful news!