What’s the project?
We are applying for funding from the Wellcome Trust for a new study called (draft name) “Pendolum Project”. The lead applicant is Dr Poornima Kumar, from Harvard University, and the co-applicant leading the UK site is Dr Martina Di Simplicio, Imperial College London.
Background and rationale
Mood instability is defined as the experience of intense and rapid changes in mood and emotions that are difficult to control. Sometimes experiencing mood swings can impair daily living in itself. Other times it may lead to behaviours that initially suppress the mood swings but then have a negative impact, such as misusing substances, overeating or self-harm. Mood instability is a symptom that occurs in individuals with different psychiatric diagnosis, including depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and so-called personality disorders. We know from previous research that experiencing mood instability is often associated with medication and talking therapies being less effective, with more frequent use of healthcare services including hospitalisation and with higher suicide risk.
Despite this recognised negative impact on individuals’ health, mood instability is often treated as a secondary symptom by clinicians and remains poorly understood compared to other symptoms like for example low mood. As a consequence, we also lack effective interventions to target it, whether drugs or talking therapies.
Aims of the project
This project application wants to exploit a novel set of methods that has recently emerged as promising in psychiatry and neuroscience, called “computational methods”. Using these methods, we aim to better understand what automatic thought mechanisms and what brain circuits are involved in maintaining mood instability across individuals with different diagnoses. We hope that understanding the detailed thought processes and brain circuits can guide us to refine treatment targets. For example, we can develop a new therapy technique to specifically target an unconscious thought process to disrupt mood swings.
Methods
Put simply, “computational methods” use mathematical formulas to model real data, in this case, to model human behaviour both in experiments like computer tasks and in real life. For example, using mathematical formulas helps us test more rigorously what precise factors determine how people make decisions. This means that we attribute numerical values to factors influencing decisions: for example, in deciding whether to go to a new friend’s party, we can model factors such as previous experiences at parties, expectations of having a good time, uncertainty, fear of having a bad time, the importance of the friendship etc. We then run simulations where these different factors have different numerical values in a formula and compare the outcome of the simulation with the real decision outcome, to derive which factor actually influenced the decision.
Our project will ask individuals to complete computer tasks (like games) every week, which model conscious and automatic thought processes, such as making decisions, anticipating rewards or negative outcomes, imagining uncertain scenarios etc. We will use mathematical formulas to then understand the data from these tasks as in the example above. We will also individuals to track their mood so we can then test which factors in those formulas (modeling real life) seem to impact mood swings more than others in different individuals.
Design
To understand mood swings we need to repeat computer tasks over time and see how they change as mood varies. This is something that has been crucially missing in previous research. For this reason, we want to run an experiment over 12 weeks where we will ask individuals to:
- Attend a screening visit in person (3 hours) at the Hammersmith hospital
- Use an app to rate their mood, energy, motivation, mental images and record any important event daily (5 min)
- Complete computer tasks weekly from home (1 hour)
Attend 3 brain scans (one per month for 2 hrs/each) at the Hammersmith hospital
Find out more
We would like to set up a Lived Experience Advisory Group for the Pendolum Project in the UK with 4-6 individuals with lived experience of mood swings to inform all aspects of the project.
How can you take part?
- Give us feedback and ideas on the project design/idea for our funding application:
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- We can send you more details and specific questions on the project, and you can send us comments / answers to the questions via email
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- You can attend a 1 hr meeting on MS Teams to hear more and give your input on Tuesday 16th July at 2-3pm (if you have missed this but are still interested, please get in touch as there will be more meetings after the summer)
- Your feedback can include ideas on what you think the Lived Experience Advisory Group could do
- If after reading / after the meeting, you are interested in the project, join the Advisory Group:
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- Attend one or two, 1 hr meetings between September and December to support the research team get the funding (e.g. preparing for interviews, preparing new applications)
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- If the project is funded the Advisory Group will continue working from March 2025 for 5 years, including various levels of commitment. For example, we would like the Advisory Group to meet around 2-3 times/year and help us design and monitor the study, develop ways to communicate with participants (e.g. co-run social media channels together with the research team), discuss and interpret the results and disseminate the findings with the research team. We would like 1-2 Advisory Group members to also join the research project Steering Committee. You can decide to take part in all or just some of these activities.
- Age: 18-65 [the project is not just for young people, but we want to make sure that young people are represented, and we may split the group based on age at times if participants suggest so]
- Lived experience of ‘mood swings’ as a symptom of depression, bipolar disorder or anxiety disorders (including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)
- Stable internet connection
- Location: we are looking for individuals both local in North West London and from across the UK.
Please let us know about your ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation; please also share a bit about your mental health experiences, such as if you have a specific diagnosis and if you are or have been under a mental health team. This information is only used to try set up a group with different background and experiences.
Meetings and revising material are reimbursed 30£/hr, if online; 25£/hr plus travel expenses if in person.
If the project is funded, there will be access to training on research methods and participation from the Patients Experience Research Centre at Imperial College. If you decide to help us write papers at the end of study, your name will also be on the publication.
Please contact Martina: [email protected]
No deadline!
Please note that the McPin Foundation regularly promotes opportunities on behalf of other institutions; we are not responsible for the continuation or contents of further correspondence with any project partners where we are not listed as the project main point of contact.
