Background: Being able to assess cognitive performance and neurofunctional activation in the same group of patients is of special relevance in bipolar disorder (BD). Such an assessment provides valuable information about possible trait markers at the neurocognitive level.
Objectives: This study aims to assess, characterize and correlate neurofunctional performance (changes in intensity of the BOLD signal and time of response to neurofunctional paradigms) and neurocognitive performance (in traditional neuropsychological tests) in euthymic patients with BD-I. An additional objective is to estimate the possible differences in the change in intensity of the BOLD signal in patients diagnosed with BD-I and in subjects with no psychiatric disorder.
A new paradigm of neurocognitive assessment is described as well as the possible differences in the time of neurofunctional response. Results of cognitive performance in neuropsychological assessment will be correlated with performance in assessment with functional magnetic resonance.
Method: We evaluated 10 euthymic patients with BD-I and 5 subjects with no psychiatric disorder. A complete psychiatric interview is conducted for all subjects by DIGS, and the fMRI is used to evaluate their operative and episodic memory processes and to estimate their general intellectual capacity and executive function.
Results: We found a correlation between neurofunctional and neurocognitive performance, and one between the activation and the intensity of the BOLD signal in the neuroanatomical areas responsible for the evaluated processes. We also found that the group of patients with BD-I have lower performance concerning attention, episodic memory and executive function processes, compared to the control group.