Principal Investigator
Alessandra Passarotti, PhD

The main goal of this proposal is to use the CogMed Working Memory Training Program for school-age children to test whether adolescents with pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) will improve their visuo-spatial working memory functions after undergoing intensive 5-week working memory training. Children with PBD exhibit a profile of affect dysregulation, rapid mood cycling with mixed episodes, elated mood, impulsivity and irritability, increased energy and disinhibition. Recent studies suggest that affect dysregulation is accompanied by severe cognitive deficits in the attention and working memory domains relative to demographically matched healthy controls (HC). These deficits dramatically affect academic skills and complex behavior on a daily basis, even independent of illness status. Given that working memory deficits are associated with scholastic underachievement and poor interpersonal functions and may worsen in PBD with development compared to healthy peers, it is crucial to develop innovative targeted cognitive intervention that may help reduce these severe cognitive deficits in PBD and prevent worsening of cognitive function and school performance as the child develops.

Goal 1: To test whether 14-18 year old euthymic adolescents with PBD (Type I and II) will show improvements in working memory functions after undergoing a 5-week, home-based working memory training treatment using CogMed. Improvement will be tested relative to their initial performance and to a PBD group who will undergo a control condition.

Hypothesis: We hypothesize that relative to the initial assessment, after 5 weeks of working memory training euthymic PBD participants will show significant improvement in working memory functions that are closely matched to the working memory operations involved in the 12 CogMed tasks. Improvement in the training treatment group will be greater than that exhibited by the PBD group undergoing the control condition.

Goal 2: To assess whether the training group and the control group will show improvements in general attention and working memory tasks as assessed through standardized tests and computerized tasks developed in our laboratory.

Hypothesis: Both groups may show general improvement in attention functions, as found in previous studies that trained healthy children and children with ADHD using CogMed. We predict that the Cogmed training will not improve significantly response inhibition, verbal memory, affect processes and executive functions, which will be assessed with computerized tasks developed in our laboratory.

FUNDING: 2011 Depression and Bipolar Foundation Alternative Treatment (DBDAT) Award