What is it about?
We tested a cognitive task (mental arithmetic) while participants were emotionally distracted. Patients with bipolar disorder showed greater distraction effects in response times, which correlated with compensatory hyperactivation in parietal cortical activity. Healthy people with increased risk to develop bipolar disorder (relatives of patients, people with hypomanic personality) did not show this increased distractibility.
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Why is it important?
Even in remission, patients with bipolar disorder show many cognitive impairements, which reduces psychosocial functioning (e.g. being able to do a job). The study shows that part of these cognitive impairments is due to increased emotional distractibility. Interventions should, therefore, not only focus on cognitive trainings, but also on the shielding from emotions to improve cognitive functioning.
Perspectives
This study is extensive (e.g. with three independent cohorts tested in fMRI) and incredibly well-controlled (e.g. with a functional localizer task prior to the main paradigm). Thus, the results can be very clearly interpreted, which I like most about this paper.
Philipp Kanske
Technische Universitat Dresden
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Neural Correlates of Emotional Distractibility in Bipolar Disorder Patients, Unaffected Relatives, and Individuals With Hypomanic Personality, American Journal of Psychiatry, December 2013, American Psychiatric Association,
DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2013.12081044.
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