Abstract
Studies on neurocognitive functioning in bipolar disorder, reporting deficits in memory, attention and executive functioning, have primarily focused on bipolar I disorder. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of lifetime history of psychosis for neurocognitive functioning in bipolar disorder, regardless of what subtype of the disorder the patients had (I or II). Psychotic bipolar disorder may represent a distinct subgroup of bipolar affective illness, with more cognitive deficits in attention and executive functioning.
A sample of individuals with bipolar disorder (I or II) with history of psychosis (n = 23) and without history of psychosis (n = 19) and healthy controls (n = 19), from an ongoing study on severe mental disorder, were included. Attention was measured with a dichotic listening paradigm, and executive functioning was measured with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.
Compared with controls, none of the bipolar groups performed poorer across neurocognitive measures of attention and executive functioning. These findings do not support other findings that neurocognitive dysfunction in bipolar disorders is determined more by history of psychosis than by Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition) diagnostic category or subtype.