A Holistic Comparison of Neuropsychological Functioning in Patients with ADHD and Bipolar Disorder

TERESA TORRALVA; SERGIO STREJILEVICH; EZEQUIEL GLEICHGERRCHT; MARCELO CETKOVICH; ALICIA LISCHINSKY; FACUNDO MANES

Buenos Aires

Encuentro; Join Mid-Year Meeting; 2008

The International Neuropsychological Society, Sociedad de Neuropsicología de Argentina

Objective: Bipolar disorder (BD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) usually manifest with shared clinical symptoms, proving quite challenging to thoroughly differentiate one from another. Previous studies have characterized these two disorders independently, but few authors have compared both neuropathologies from a comparative, holistic perspective. Participants and methods: the present study compared the performance of BD (n=15), ADHD (n=16) and healthy controls (n=15) on a complete battery of neuropsychological tests assessing memory, attention, executive functions, visuomotor abilities, and language. Results: all groups were successfully matched for age, sex, and years of education. Both ADHD and BD differed significantly from the control group on tests assessing memory and executive functions, while no significant differences were found between these two clinical groups. Noticeably, however, ADHD had significantly better performance than BD on the recognition phase of the Rey list memory task and the Rey figure. Conclusions: our results are supported by previous studies conducted on each group individually, supporting the shared deficits previously described between BD and ADHD on memory and executive function tasks. This study, however, reveals that the recall pahse of memory processing may be distinguished on ADHD and BD through recognition tasks. The better performance of ADHD over BD reflects the crucial role of the executive component on their memory deficits. Results of this calibre stress the need for detailed examination of these areas as potentially useful assets in developing tools for diferential diagnosis.