Early neurophysiological stimulus processing during a performance-monitoring task differentiates women with bipolar disorder from women with ADHD

Sophie Carruthers; Giorgia Michelini; Viryanaga Kitsune; Georgina M Hosang; Daniel Brandeis; Philip Asherson; Jonna Kuntsi

doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2021.114088

Early neurophysiological stimulus processing during a performance-monitoring task differentiates women with bipolar disorder from women with ADHD

Psychiatry Res. 2021 Sep:303:114088. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2021.114088. Epub 2021 Jun 29.

Authors

Sophie Carruthers¹, Giorgia Michelini², Viryanaga Kitsune³, Georgina M Hosang⁴, Daniel Brandeis⁵, Philip Asherson³, Jonna Kuntsi⁶

Affiliations

¹ Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, London, UK; Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, London, UK.
² Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, London, UK; Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA, USA.
³ Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, London, UK.
⁴ Centre for Psychiatry, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Barts & The London School of Medicine & Dentistry, Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK.
⁵ Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric Hospital, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Center for Integrative Human Physiology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁶ Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, London, UK. Electronic address: jonna.kuntsi@kcl.ac.uk.

PMID: 34252636
DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2021.114088

Abstract

Adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or bipolar disorder (BD) may display similar cognitive impairments and clinical symptoms, which might reflect shared mechanisms. Initial evidence indicates disorder-specific and overlapping neurophysiological alterations using event-related potentials (ERPs) in individuals with BD or ADHD during attentional tasks, but it is unknown whether impairments generalize across other processes and tasks. We conduct the first comparison between women with ADHD (n = 20), women with BD (n = 20) and control women (n = 20) on ERPs from a performance-monitoring flanker task. The BD group showed a significantly attenuated frontal ERP of conflict monitoring (N2) compared to the ADHD group across both low-conflict (congruent) and high-conflict (incongruent) task conditions, and compared to controls in the high-conflict condition. However, when controlling for an earlier attentional ERP (frontal N1), which was significantly reduced in participants with BD compared to participants with ADHD and controls, N2 group differences were no longer significant. These results indicate that ERP differences in conflict monitoring may be attributable to differences in earlier attentional processes. These findings identify neural differences in early attention between BD and ADHD which precede conflict monitoring processes, potentially pointing to distinct neural mechanisms implicated in the two disorders.

Keywords: Adult; Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; Bipolar disorder; Event-related potential; Performance monitoring.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Attention
Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity* / diagnosis
Bipolar Disorder*
Cognitive Dysfunction*
Electroencephalography
Evoked Potentials
Female
Humans

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding