Ventral prefrontal executive function impairment as a potential endophenotypic marker for bipolar disorder.

BACKGROUND: Patients with remitted bipolar disorder have cognitive impairments, particularly in executive functions. However, the findings of studies that investigated cognitive functions in unaffected relatives of patients with bipolar disorder are conflicting. AIMS: The aim of this study is to investigate executive functions in healthy parents of patients with bipolar I disorder, along with bipolar I disorder patients and matched controls. It has been hypothesized that both patients with bipolar I disorder and their parents would have executive function impairments compared with controls. METHODS: 25 patients with bipolar I disorder, in full remission, 25 healthy controls that matched the patients with respect to age, gender and education, 50 healthy parents of those patients and 50 healthy controls that matched the parents for age, gender and education were included in the study. All the participants were interviewed with Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-Axis I (SCID-I). Executive functions were assessed using the Verbal Fluency Test (VFT), Trail Making Test (TMT), Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and Stroop Test. RESULTS: Patients performed significantly worse than their matched controls on the VFT, TMT and Stroop tests, but not on the WCST. Parents performed significantly worse than their matched controls on the TMT and Stroop tests, but not on the VFT and WCST. CONCLUSIONS: Our results bring more evidence that deficits in ventral, but not dorsal prefrontal executive functions are associated with familial vulnerability to bipolar disorder and ventral prefrontal executive function impairments may represent a potential endophenotype for bipolar disorder.

[Association of suicide attempts with childhood traumatic experiences in patients with major depression]. / Majör Depresyonda Özkiyim Girisimi ile Çocukluk Çagi Örselenmeleri Arasindaki Iliski.

OBJECTIVE: Childhood traumatic experiences are widely known risk factors in the development of various psychiatric disorders and unfavorable behavior patterns, including suicide attempts. Moreover, in the course of some psychiatric disorders, suicide attempts are more frequent in patients with childhood traumatic experiences. This study explores the influence of childhood traumatic experiences on suicide attempts in patients with major depression. METHOD: Our study involved 30 patients with major depressive disorder in full remission who had attempted suicide, and 30 patients with major depressive disorder in full remission who had never attempted suicide, as well as 30 healthy controls matched with patients for age, gender, and education. All the subjects were interviewed with Structural Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-I). Subsequently, all subjects were administered Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). RESULTS: Patients who had attempted suicide reported significantly higher CTQ scores for emotional abuse and emotional neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse than healthy controls. Moreover, patients who had attempted suicide reported significantly higher CTQ scores for each three subdomains than patients who had never attempted suicide. There were no significant difference between patients who had never attempted suicide and healthy controls in any of the CTQ subdomains. CONCLUSION: Childhood trauma may be a risk factor for suicide attempts in patients with depression. Inquiring childhood traumatic experiences could make an important contribution to predict suicide risk in patients with depression.

Facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia: the impact of gender.

OBJECTIVE: Previous studies reported gender differences for facial emotion recognition in healthy people, with women performing better than men. Few studies that examined gender differences for facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia brought out inconsistent findings. The aim of this study is to investigate gender differences for facial emotion identification and discrimination abilities in patients with schizophrenia. METHODS: 35 female and 35 male patients with schizophrenia, along with 35 female and 35 male healthy controls were included in the study. All the subjects were evaluated with Facial Emotion Identification Test (FEIT), Facial Emotion Discrimination Test (FEDT), and Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT). Patients' psychopathological symptoms were rated by means of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). RESULTS: Male patients performed significantly worse than female patients on FEIT total, and negative scores. Male controls performed significantly worse than female controls on FEIT total and negative scores. On all tasks, female patients performed comparable with controls. Male patients performed significantly worse than controls on FEIT, and FEDT. CONCLUSION: Women with schizophrenia outperformed men for facial emotion recognition ability in a pattern that is similar with the healthy controls. It could be claimed that male patients with schizophrenia need special consideration for emotion perception deficits.