Cognitive Psychopathology of Bipolar Disorder: Future Directions for Treatment

In the last decade, cognitive psychopathology has shed light on how abnormal changes in cognitive functions, which are closely related to emotional and relational processes, mayexplain development, maintenance, and recurrence of psychiatric disorders and how dysfunction of certain brain areas determine specific cognitive phenotypes characterizing psychiatric disorders (1). Episodic memory impairment accounting for a severe damage of a sense of self and a lack of autonoetic consciousness in schizophrenia was first reported in a previous study (2). Neuropsychological investigations have also demonstrated that patients with Bipolar Disorder (BD) present persistent cognitive impairment even during the euthymic phase (3).