Impaired cognitive control over emotional material in euthymic bipolar disorder

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Bipolar disorder (BD) is frequently associated with cognitive control (CC) deficits.
• These CC impairments are observed in high-risk populations and linked to persistent BD symptoms.
• It is unclear if BD involves a general CC deficit or one specific to emotional material processing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether individuals with bipolar disorder exhibit impaired cognitive control when processing emotional stimuli.
• To determine if this deficit is specific to negative or positive emotional material.

Main Methods:

• Employed an arithmetic inhibition task with pictorial stimuli in 42 remitted bipolar patients and 39 healthy controls.
• Required participants to inhibit responses to pictorial stimuli during an arithmetic task.

Main Results:

• Both bipolar disorder patients and healthy controls struggled with cognitive control when processing negative stimuli.
• Bipolar disorder patients demonstrated significantly impaired cognitive control when processing positive stimuli compared to healthy controls.

Conclusions:

• Bipolar disorder is linked to cognitive control deficits in processing emotional stimuli, especially positive ones, even in remission.
• These findings suggest potential implications for emotion regulation difficulties in bipolar disorder.