Abstract
Recent meta-analytic reviews on cognitive dysfunction in adult patients with bipolar disorder highlight traits-like deficits in attention/processing speed, episodic memory, and executive functions. These cognitive deficits have great impacts on social functioning of patients with BD even during euthymic state. Dysfunctional neural circuitries including prefrontal-striatal systems and medial temporal/diencephalic systems might be underlying behind the impairments. Growing evidences suggests that pediatric BD patients also experience traits-like cognitive impairments similar to those found in adult BD patients. Since cognitive studies on pediatric BD have confounds such as lack of consensus for diagnosis, high ADHD co morbidity, and possible impacts of medications on cognition, the results need to be interpreted with caution; however, the present findings support a view that pediatric BD and adult BD are continuous clinical entities presenting genetic and neuro-developmental abnormalities.
