Attention orienting and inhibitory control across the different mood states in bipolar disorder: An emotional antisaccade task

tAn antisaccade experiment, using happy, sad, and neutral faces, was conducted to examine the effect ofmood-congruent information on inhibitory control (antisaccade task) and attentional orienting (prosac-cade task) during the different episodes of bipolar disorder (BD) - manic (n = 22), depressive (n = 25), andeuthymic (n = 24). A group of 28 healthy controls was also included. Results revealed that symptomaticpatients committed more antisaccade errors than healthy individuals, especially with mood-congruentfaces. The manic group committed more antisaccade errors in response to happy faces, while thedepressed group tended to commit more antisaccade errors in response to sad faces. Additionally, anti-saccade latencies were slower in BD patients than in healthy individuals, whereas prosaccade latencieswere slower in symptomatic patients. Taken together, these findings revealed the following: (a) slowinhibitory control in BD patients, regardless of their episode (i.e., a trait), and (b) impaired inhibitorycontrol restricted to symptomatic patients (i.e., a state)