Neuro-cognitive functioning in unaffected siblings of patients with bipolar disorder: Comparison with bipolar patients and healthy controls

The objective of the present study was to assess the performance of lithium treated euthymic bipolar patients in tests measuring spatial working memory (SWM), planning, and verbal fluency and to delineate the influence of gender on cognitive functioning. Fifty-nine euthymic bipolar patients, treated with lithium carbonate for at least 5 yr, were studied. Patients and controls underwent a neuropsychological assessment. Bipolar patients had significantly worse results than the healthy controls in the spatial memory and planning as well as verbal fluency tests. We detected a gender-related imbalance in the SWM results. Deficits in SWM were observed in male-only comparisons but not in female-only comparisons. The SWM scores were significantly poorer in male patients than in male controls. In female-only comparisons, female patients did not have significantly poorer SWM results in any category than their controls. Bipolar women scored worse in some other tests. The present study points to the different patterns of neuropsychological disturbances in female and male patients and suggests that sex-dependent differences should be taken into account in order to tailor the therapeutic intervention aimed at the improvement of cognitive functions.

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Response Processes to Looming Appetitive and Aversive Cues in Euthymic Bipolar Patients and Their First-Degree Relatives: An Exploratory Study

Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1177/0253717620975285 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 025371762097528

Author(s):

Velprashanth Venkatesan ◽

Christoday R J Khess ◽

Umesh Shreekantiah ◽

Nishant Goyal ◽

K. K. Kshitiz

Keyword(s):

Bipolar Disorder ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Sensitivity To Reward ◽

Bipolar Group ◽

First Degree Relatives ◽

Vulnerability Model ◽

Increased Sensitivity ◽

Appetitive Cues ◽

Spectrum Disorders ◽

Bipolar Patients

Background: Patients with bipolar disorder demonstrate increased sensitivity to appetitive/rewarding stimuli even during euthymia. On presentation of arousing pictures, they show a peculiar response, suggesting heightened vigilance. While responding to looming arousing cues, studies show subjects with anxiety spectrum disorders exhibit increased reaction time (RT), explained by the “looming-vulnerability model.” This study aimed to investigate the responses to looming arousing cues in euthymic bipolar patients and their first-degree relatives, as compared to healthy controls. Method: A looming appetitive and aversive cue paradigm was designed for assessing the RT of patients to process appetitive and aversive cues. The behavioral inhibition/activation and sensitivity to reward/punishment amongst the groups were also assessed. Results: The bipolar group showed significantly longer RT to process appetitive cues irrespective of the looming condition. Aversive cues elicited significantly longer RT in both the bipolar group and in first-degree relatives, but only when presented with the looming condition. Significant looming bias was elicited in the bipolar group which suggested a particular cognitive style to looming cues. A composite measure of RT along with sensitivity to reward/punishment distinguishes the bipolar group and their first-degree relatives from the healthy controls. Conclusion: The looming vulnerability model may provide important insights for future exploration of cognitive endophenotypes in bipolar disorder.

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Long-term trajectory of cognitive performance in people with bipolar disorder and controls: 6-year longitudinal study

BJPsych Open ◽

10.1192/bjo.2021.66 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Timea Sparding ◽

Erik Joas ◽

Caitlin Clements ◽

Carl M. Sellgren ◽

Erik Pålsson ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Bipolar Disorder ◽

Cognitive Functioning ◽

Cognitive Performance ◽

Repeated Measures ◽

Cognitive Test ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Time Interaction

Background Cross-sectional studies have found impaired cognitive functioning in patients with bipolar disorder, but long-term longitudinal studies are scarce. Aims The aims of this study were to examine the 6-year longitudinal course of cognitive functioning in patients with bipolar disorder and healthy controls. Subsets of patients were examined to investigate possible differences in cognitive trajectories. Method Patients with bipolar I disorder (n = 44) or bipolar II disorder (n = 28) and healthy controls (n = 59) were tested with a comprehensive cognitive test battery at baseline and retested after 6 years. We conducted repeated measures ANCOVAs with group as a between-subject factor and tested the significance of group and time interaction. Results By and large, the change in cognitive functioning between baseline and follow-up did not differ significantly between participants with bipolar disorder and healthy controls. Comparing subsets of patients, for example those with bipolar I and II disorder and those with and without manic episodes during follow-up, did not reveal subgroups more vulnerable to cognitive decline. Conclusions Cognitive performance remained stable in patients with bipolar disorder over a 6-year period and evolved similarly to healthy controls. These findings argue against the notion of a general progressive decline in cognitive functioning in bipolar disorder.

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Event-related potential examination of facial affect processing in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia

Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0033291712001006 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 43 (1) ◽

pp. 109-117 ◽

Cited By ~ 37

Author(s):

J. K. Wynn ◽

C. Jahshan ◽

L. L. Altshuler ◽

D. C. Glahn ◽

M. F. Green

Keyword(s):

Bipolar Disorder ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Facial Affect ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Facial Features ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Patient Groups ◽

Bipolar Patients ◽

Affect Processing

BackgroundPatients with bipolar disorder exhibit consistent deficits in facial affect identification at both behavioral and neural levels. However, little is known about which stages of facial affect processing are dysfunctional.MethodEvent-related potentials (ERPs), including amplitude and latency, were used to evaluate two stages of facial affect processing: N170 to examine structural encoding of facial features and N250 to examine decoding of facial features in 57 bipolar disorder patients, 30 schizophrenia patients and 30 healthy controls. Three conditions were administered: participants were asked to identify the emotion of a face, the gender of a face, or whether a building was one or two stories tall.ResultsSchizophrenia patients' emotion identification accuracy was lower than that of bipolar patients and healthy controls. N170 amplitude was significantly smaller in schizophrenia patients compared to bipolar patients and healthy controls, which did not differ from each other. Both patient groups had significantly longer N170 latency compared to healthy controls. For N250, both patient groups showed significantly smaller amplitudes compared with controls, but did not differ from each other. Bipolar patients showed longer N250 latency than healthy controls; patient groups did not differ from each other.ConclusionsBipolar disorder patients have relatively intact structural encoding of faces (N170) but are impaired when decoding facial features for complex judgments about faces (N250 latency and amplitude), such as identifying emotion or gender.

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Abnormal white matter integrity as a structural endophenotype for bipolar disorder

Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0033291716000180 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 46 (7) ◽

pp. 1547-1558 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

A. Sarıçiçek ◽

N. Zorlu ◽

N. Yalın ◽

C. Hıdıroğlu ◽

B. Çavuşoğlu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Bipolar Disorder ◽

White Matter ◽

Clinical State ◽

Control Group ◽

Type I ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Corona Radiata ◽

Left Posterior ◽

Axis I ◽

Bipolar Patients

BackgroundSeveral lines of evidence suggest that bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with white matter (WM) pathology. Investigation of unaffected first-degree relatives of BD patients may help to distinguish structural biomarkers of genetic risk without the confounding effects of burden of illness, medication or clinical state. In the present study, we applied tract-based spatial statistics to study WM changes in patients with BD, unaffected siblings and controls.MethodA total of 27 euthymic patients with BD type I, 20 unaffected siblings of bipolar patients and 29 healthy controls who did not have any current or past diagnosis of Axis I psychiatric disorders were enrolled in the study.ResultsFractional anisotropy (FA) was significantly lower in BD patients than in the control group in the corpus callosum, fornix, bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, anterior thalamic radiation, posterior thalamic radiation, cingulum, uncinate fasciculus, superior corona radiata, anterior corona radiata and left external capsule. In region-of-interest (ROI) analyses, we found that both unaffected siblings and bipolar patients had significantly reduced FA in the left posterior thalamic radiation, the left sagittal stratum, and the fornix compared with healthy controls. Average FA for unaffected siblings was intermediate between the healthy controls and bipolar patients within these ROIs.ConclusionsDecreased FA in the fornix, left posterior thalamic radiation and left sagittal stratum in both bipolar patients and unaffected siblings may represent a potential structural endophenotype or a trait-based marker for BD.

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Pareidolia in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

Frontiers in Psychiatry ◽

10.3389/fpsyt.2021.746734 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Eid G. Abo Hamza ◽

Szabolcs Kéri ◽

Katalin Csigó ◽

Dalia Bedewy ◽

Ahmed A. Moustafa

Keyword(s):

Bipolar Disorder ◽

Natural Scenes ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Black And White ◽

The Face ◽

Noise Test ◽

Bipolar Patients ◽

Blurred Images ◽

Human Faces ◽

First Time

While there are many studies on pareidolia in healthy individuals and patients with schizophrenia, to our knowledge, there are no prior studies on pareidolia in patients with bipolar disorder. Accordingly, in this study, we, for the first time, measured pareidolia in patients with bipolar disorder (N = 50), and compared that to patients with schizophrenia (N = 50) and healthy controls (N = 50). We have used (a) the scene test, which consists of 10 blurred images of natural scenes that was previously found to produce illusory face responses and (b) the noise test which had 32 black and white images consisting of visual noise and 8 images depicting human faces; participants indicated whether a face was present on these images and to point to the location where they saw the face. Illusory responses were defined as answers when observers falsely identified objects that were not on the images in the scene task (maximum illusory score: 10), and the number of noise images in which they reported the presence of a face (maximum illusory score: 32). Further, we also calculated the total pareidolia score for each task (the sum number of images with illusory responses in the scene and noise tests). The responses were scored by two independent raters with an excellent congruence (kappa > 0.9). Our results show that schizophrenia patients scored higher on pareidolia measures than both healthy controls and patients with bipolar disorder. Our findings are agreement with prior findings on more impaired cognitive processes in schizophrenia than in bipolar patients.

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Absence and size of massa intermedia in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Acta Neuropsychiatrica ◽

10.1111/j.1601-5215.2008.00296.x ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 20 (4) ◽

pp. 193-198 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Meltem Ceyhan ◽

Baki Adapınar ◽

Gokay Aksaray ◽

Figen Ozdemir ◽

Ertugrul Colak

Keyword(s):

Bipolar Disorder ◽

Magnetic Resonance ◽

Gender Difference ◽

Sagittal Plane ◽

Magnetic Resonance Images ◽

Control Group ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Specific Alteration ◽

Bipolar Patients

Objective:To evaluate the absence and size of massa intermedia (MI), a midline thalamic structure, and its gender-specific alteration in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.Methods:Thirty-five patients with schizophrenia (17 females and 18 males), 21 patients with bipolar disorder (15 females and 6 males) and 89 healthy controls (50 females and 39 males) were evaluated by magnetic resonance imaging. Thin-slice magnetic resonance images of the brain were evaluated. MI was determined in coronal and sagittal images, and area of the MI was measured on the sagittal plane.Results:Females had a significantly lower incidence of absent MI compared with males in the healthy control group. The absence of MI in schizophrenia and bipolar patients was not higher than the incidence in healthy controls. The size of MI showed a gender difference. The mean MI area size was smaller in female schizophrenia patients than in female controls, while no significant difference was observed between male schizophrenia patients and their controls.Conclusions:The size of MI, a gender difference midline structure, is smaller in females with schizophrenia, and the results of this study support other studies of structural aberration of the thalamus and other midline structures in the brains of patients with schizophrenia.

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The Effect of Gender on Neurocognitive Functioning in Bipolar Disorder

European Psychiatry ◽

10.1016/j.eurpsy.2017.01.2184 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 41 (S1) ◽

pp. S213-S213 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

K. Tournikioti ◽

P. Ferentinos ◽

I. Michopoulos ◽

D. Dikeos ◽

C. Soldatos ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Bipolar Disorder ◽

Executive Functions ◽

Associative Learning ◽

Verbal Memory ◽

Visual Memory ◽

Fixed Effects ◽

Gender Effects ◽

Analysis Of Covariance ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Bipolar Patients

IntroductionBipolar disorder (BD) is frequently associated with cognitive deficits in attention, verbal memory and executive functions that have been related to various clinical characteristics of the disorder.ObjectivesHowever, few studies have examined the effect of gender on cognition despite its clinical relevance.AimsThe aim of our study was to investigate potential diagnosis-specific gender effects on visual memory/learning and executive functions in BD.MethodsCognitive performance of 60 bipolar-I patients and 30 healthy controls was evaluated by using CANTAB battery tasks targeting spatial memory (SRM), paired associative learning (PAL), executive functions (ID/ED, SOC). A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) of neuropsychological parameters was performed with gender and diagnosis as fixed effects and age and education as covariates. Following univariate analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were undertaken to examine the effect of gender on each neuropsychological task.ResultsBipolar patients showed significantly poorer performance in paired associative learning (PAL), set shifting (ID/ED) and planning (SOC). Moreover, a diagnosis specific gender effect was observed for cognitive functioning in BD (gender × diagnosis interaction P = 0.029). Specifically, male healthy controls outperformed healthy females in tasks of visual memory/learning but this pattern was not sustained (SRM) or was even reversed (PAL) in BD patients.ConclusionsThe present study is one of the few studies that have examined the effect of gender on neurocognitive function in BD. Our findings indicate that the gender-related variation observed in healthy subjects is disrupted in BD. Moreover, they suggest that gender may modulate the degree of frontotemporal dysregulation observed in BD.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

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Pareidolia in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

10.21203/rs.3.rs-589028/v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Eid G. Abo Hamza ◽

Szabolcs Kéri ◽

Katalin Csigó ◽

Dalia Bedewy ◽

Ahmed A. Moustafa

Keyword(s):

Bipolar Disorder ◽

Natural Scenes ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Black And White ◽

The Face ◽

Noise Test ◽

Bipolar Patients ◽

Blurred Images ◽

Human Faces ◽

First Time

Abstract While there are many studies on pareidolia in healthy individuals and patients with schizophrenia, to our knowledge, there are no prior studies on pareidolia in patients with bipolar disorder. Accordingly, in this study, we, for the first time, measured pareidolia in patients with bipolar disorder (N = 50), and compared that to patients with schizophrenia (N = 50) and healthy controls (N = 50). We have used (a) the scene test, which consists of 10 blurred images of natural scenes that was previously found to produce illusory face responses and (b) the noise test which had 32 black and white images consisting of visual noise and 8 images depicting human faces; participants indicated whether a face was present on these images and to point to the location where they saw the face. Illusory responses were defined as answers when observers falsely identified objects that were not on the images in the scene task (maximum illusory score: 10), and the number of noise images in which they reported the presence of a face (maximum illusory score: 32). Further, we also calculated the total pareidolia score for each task (the sum number of images with illusory responses in the scene and noise tests). The responses were scored by two independent raters with an excellent congruence (kappa > 0.9). Our results show that schizophrenia patients scored higher on pareidolia measures than both healthy controls and patients with bipolar disorder. Our findings are agreement with prior findings on more impaired cognitive processes in schizophrenia than in bipolar patients.

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Use of Dermatoglyphic Parameters as Possible Markers in Bipolar Affective Disorder

International Journal of Health Sciences and Research ◽

10.52403/ijhsr.20210753 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (7) ◽

pp. 385-393

Author(s):

Amit Kumar Pal ◽

Sagarika Ray ◽

Jishnu Bhattacharya

Keyword(s):

Bipolar Disorder ◽

Affective Disorder ◽

Bipolar Affective Disorder ◽

Control Group ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Ridge Count ◽

Primordial Prevention ◽

And Gender ◽

The Individual ◽

Bipolar Patients

Background: Bipolar affective disorder is an episodic illness characterized by fluctuating mood states. Association of dermatoglyphic traits with bipolar affective disorder has been observed in various studies. This study was undertaken to evaluate epidermal ridge patterns in bipolar patients as compared to healthy controls attending a super speciality district hospital in West Bengal. Context and purpose of study: Establishing dermatoglyphic parameters as biomarkers for early diagnosis and consequently, prompt intervention in bipolar affective disorder will ensure a greater scope of recovery, and thus promote a better quality of life for the individual as well as lower the burden of disease for the society. Methods: Quantitative dermatoglyphic parameters namely, Total Finger Ridge Count (TFRC), Total A-B Ridge Count (TABRC), and ATD Angle of 100 bipolar patients were compared to 100 age and gender matched healthy controls. Results: Statistically significant differences were found on comparing the dermatoglyphic parameters between cases and controls. TFRC was found to be decreased while ATD angle was increased in bipolar cases, as compared to the control group. However, no significant change was observed in TABRC between the two groups. Conclusions: This study found a significant association between dermatoglyphic pattern anomalies and the development of bipolarity. This may offer a scope of primordial prevention of bipolar disorder in future. Key words: Dermatoglyphics, ridge pattern, bipolar disorder, Total Finger Ridge Count (TFRC), Total A-B Ridge Count (TABRC), ATD angle.

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