Background

Distortions in time processing may be regarded as an endophenotypic marker of neuropsychiatric diseases; however, investigations addressing Bipolar Disorder (BD) are still scarce.

Methods

The present study compared timing abilities in 30 BD patients and 30 healthy controls (HC), and explored the relationship between time processing and affective-cognitive symptoms in BD, with the aim to determine whether timing difficulties are primary in bipolar patients or due to comorbid cognitive impairment. Four tasks measuring external timing were administered: a temporal and spatial orienting of attention task and a temporal and colour discrimination task, for assessing the ability to evaluate temporal properties of external events; two other tasks assessed the speed of the internal clock (i.e. temporal bisection and temporal production tasks). Attentional, executive and working memory (WM) demands were equated for controlling additional cognitive processes.

Results

BD patients did not show differences in external timing accuracy compared to HC; conversely, we found increased variability of the internal clock in BD and this performance was related to Major Depressive Episodes recurrence and WM functioning. Hence, variability of the internal clock is influenced by the progressive course of BD and impacted by variations in WM.

Limitations

Future studies including BD patients stratified by mood episode will further specify timing alterations conditional to the current affective state.

Conclusions

Our results shed new light on the clinical phenotypes of BD, suggesting that timing might be used as a model system of the ongoing pathophysiological process.

中文翻译：

---

双相情感障碍的内部时钟变异性、情绪波动和工作记忆

背景

时间处理的扭曲可被视为神经精神疾病的内表型标志；然而，针对双相情感障碍 (BD) 的研究仍然很少。

方法

本研究比较了 30 名 BD 患者和 30 名健康对照 (HC) 的时间处理能力，并探讨了时间处理与 BD 情感认知症状之间的关系，旨在确定时间困难是双相情感障碍患者的主要还是由于共病认知障碍。执行了四项测量外部时间的任务：注意力任务的时间和空间定向以及时间和颜色辨别任务，用于评估评估外部事件时间特性的能力；另外两个任务评估了内部时钟的速度（即时间二分和时间生产任务）。注意、执行和工作记忆 (WM) 需求等同于控制额外的认知过程。

结果

与 HC 相比，BD 患者的外部计时准确性没有差异；相反，我们发现 BD 内部时钟的变异性增加，这种表现与重度抑郁发作复发和 WM 功能有关。因此，内部时钟的可变性受 BD 渐进过程的影响，并受 WM 变化的影响。

限制

未来的研究，包括按情绪发作分层的 BD 患者，将进一步指定以当前情感状态为条件的时间变化。

结论

我们的研究结果为 BD 的临床表型提供了新的线索，表明时间可能被用作正在进行的病理生理过程的模型系统。