Cognitive impairment in remission in bipolar affective disorder

As our group and others have shown, patients with mania and unipolar depression show generalized impairment on tests of memory and executive function. In comparison, this study has demonstrated that patients in remission show a relatively specific impairment in memory with recovery of accuracy measures on executive function task. The increased response latency on the executive tasks suggests a possible small residual impairment. These findings suggest that in netIroanatomical terms, more posterior cortical function (temporal lobe) has not improved but there is at least some recovery of frontal lobe function in remission.