The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
Lithium, as I described earlier, seems to reduce the manic episodes or the intensity of manic episodes in symptomology, in people with bipolar disorder, it's doing that through neuroprotection. So protecting neural circuits from dying away that initially are overactive and that overactivity causing excitotoxicity, blocks that excitotoxicity, we believe.
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Overactivity of a given circuit eventually leads to neurotoxicity, excuse me, lithium is preventing that neurotoxicity by reducing the number of receptors in certain elements within those circuits, so called homeostatic scaling, it's downregulating the number of receptors leading to less excitability and preventing, we think, excitotoxicity.
And what this paper shows and what's been shown over and over again, is that when neurons are exposed to lithium for a period of time, there is a reduction in the excitability of the postsynaptic neuron, that is neurons within the brain become less excitable over time if lithium is present
And in that sense, you can see exactly why it's important to get lithium treatment in there early for people with bipolar disorder.