Stroop-test interference in bipolar disorder

Abstract

We analysed Stroop (neuropsychological screening test) measures of response inhibition in 18 twin pairs discordant for bipolar I disorder compared with 17 healthy control pairs, as well as 40 singletons with bipolar disorder with psychotic features and a family history of psychosis, 46 of their first-degree relatives without bipolar disorder or psychosis and 48 controls. In both studies, individuals with bipolar disorder showed Stroop deficits and their first-degree relatives showed intact performance. In the twin patients, an interference score was associated with depressive symptoms. Having a first-degree relative with bipolar disorder, even a familial, psychotic form, did not confer risk for enhanced susceptibility to interference in our studies.

Executive function in parents of patients with familial versus sporadic bipolar disorder

“…Nevertheless, studies investigating cognitive function in healthy relatives of patients with bipolar disorder are conflicting, and the neurocognitive profile of relatives of bipolar disorder probands is still unclear [10]. Some studies have reported impaired response inhibition in healthy relatives of patients with bipolar disorder [11][12][13][14], whereas other studies reported intact response inhibition [15][16][17][18]. Moreover, most of the studies reported intact set shifting and cognitive flexibility [11,14,15,[19][20][21][22], and some studies reported impairments in those abilities [23,24].…”

Role of attention and translation in conflict resolution: Implications for Stroop matching task interference.

“…The increased reaction time (RT) of incongruent trials, referred to as Stroop interference, is considered a hallmark of the intrusion of task-irrelevant information in the context of selective attention. Many clinical and nonclinical studies have used Stroop-like tasks to assess frontal lobe function and the imposition of higher-order control to inhibit or suppress the processing of irrelevant stimuli, confirming the relationship between the Stroop task and the attentional executive system (Bruchmann, Herper, Konrad, Pantev, & Huster, 2010;Krabbendam et al, 2009;Kravariti et al, 2009;Ungar, Nestor, Niznikiewicz, Wible, & Kubicki, 2010).…”

Neurocognitive Functioning in Bipolar Disorder: A Comprehensive Review of Recent Data

“…A more recent study on response inhibition found no impairment in discordant twins of BD patients (event with a psychotic and familial form). The presence of depressive symptoms in twins explained lower performance in the testing (Kravariti et al 2009 ). In most of these studies, unaffected co-twins suffered from minor or subthreshold mental disorders and dysthymia.…”

“…There are some data, however, which dispute the usefulness of specifi c executive functions, including cognitive control during episodic memory retrieval (Christodoulou et al 2012 ), response inhibition (Kravariti et al 2009 ) and cognitive set-shifting (Schulze et al 2011 ). The data also suggest that although a widespread attention and memory deficit might be present in families of BD, there are some negative data concerning concentration (Clark et al 2005a ), psychomotor performance (Bora et al 2008 ;Szoke et al 2006 ), working memory (Schulze et al 2011 ), spatial working memory (Pirkola et al 2005 ), verbal learning (Antila et al 2007b ), verbal memory (Bora et al 2008 ) and executive functions (Szoke et al 2006 ).…”