Both bipolar disorder (BD) patients and their first-degree relatives were slower than were healthy controls in an emotion recognition task, suggesting facial recognition may be an endophenotype in bipolar disorder, according to a study published in Psychiatry Research.
Dr. Esther Vierck of the University of Otago in New Zealand and her associates compared 36 BD patients and 40 healthy control participants in a computerized facial emotion recognition task – 24 of the BD patient group’s first-degree relatives also were measured.
The researchers noted that bipolar patients were less accurate in recognizing emotional expressions than were controls, but did not find any evidence for emotion specificity within the BD or BD relative groups.
Read the article here: doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2015.08.033.