A pilot study of positive mood induction in euthymic bipolar subjects compared with healthy controls

Abstract

Background. Demonstrating differences between euthymic bipolar subjects and healthy controls in response to positive (happy) mood induction may help elucidate how mania evolves. This pilot study evaluates the Go task in a reward paradigm as a method for inducing a happy mood state and compares the response of euthymic bipolar subjects and healthy controls.Method. The Sense of Hyperpositive Self Scale, the Tellegen positive and negative adjectives, the Global-Local task and a visual analogue scale for measuring positive affect were administered to 15 euthymic bipolar subjects and 19 age-and-sex-matched healthy control subjects before and after they had performed the Go task in a reward paradigm.Results. Significant differences were found between subjects and controls on several measures at each time-point but there were no differences across the groups across time except for the visual analogue scales, where subjects had a more sustained duration in self-reported happiness compared with controls.Conclusions. This pilot study has shown that a positive affect can be induced in bipolar subjects and controls which can be demonstrated by changes in scores on several tasks. However, only the visual analogue scales showed a significant difference between cases and controls over time. Such tests may prove valuable in furthering understanding about the evolution of manic mood states.

Are Social Comparisons Detrimental for the Mood and Self-Esteem of Individuals with an Affective Disorder?

“…For the PANAS only we used a 3 9 3 9 2 design, as it was completed three times, with the third assessment at the end to explore whether mood effects last longer in patients with BD (see Farmer et al 2006). The two between-subject factors were 'group' (UD, BD, or HC), and 'experimental condition' (upward and downward social comparison).…”

“…The studies reported above provide indirect evidence to predict that favourable downward comparisons will have a positive effect on mood and self-esteem especially in people with BD. Based on Farmer et al (2006) results demonstrating a prolonged elevated happiness after a positive mood induction in patients with BD, it could even be assumed that such positive effects on mood from downward social comparisons might last longer in patients with BD than healthy controls.…”

Reward circuitry dysfunction in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders and genetic syndromes: animal models and clinical findings

“…It has been suggested that these symptoms may reflect upregulation of the mesolimbic DA system in bipolar disorder [266]. Behavioral studies of response to rewards in bipolar disorder indicate deficits in behavioral adaptation to changing reward contingencies [267] and prolonged elevation of mood in response to monetary reward in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder [268]. Reward motivation is also atypical in individuals with bipolar disorder, as shown by a self-report measure of reward responsivity [269] and in eye-tracking studies of monetary gains and losses [270].…”

Abnormal Reward System Activation in Mania

“…Deficits in performing response-reversal tasks, modeling behavioral adaptation to changing reward contingencies in euthymic children with bipolar disorder, support this notion (Gorrindo et al, 2005). Further, it has been shown that induction of happy mood with a reward task results in prolonged elevated mood in euthymic bipolar patients compared to healthy controls (Farmer et al, 2006).…”

“…We designed this study to test two hypotheses: (1) Medicated bipolar patients during an acute manic episode will show deficient reward processing (Miller, 1993;Johnson, 2005;Gorrindo et al, 2005;Farmer et al, 2006) in the form of decreased reward-related brain activation. (2) Medicated patients during an acute episode of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder will not show similarly decreased reward-related brain activation (Juckel et al, 2006b), which provides evidence that the anticipated changes in medicated, manic patients are not simply due to an acute psychiatric illness or due to treatment with neuroleptic medication.…”