Vulnerabilities in sequencing and task switching in healthy youth offspring of parents with mood disorders

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Visuospatial processing and task switching are impaired in individuals with mood disorders. It is unknown whether early deficits are present before mood symptom on set or are related to risk for a specific type of mood disorder. To investigate, we compared visual attention and task switching during sequencing among never-disordered youth with parental family histories of bipolar (BD) and major depressive disorders (MDD) and healthy controls (HC) with no personal or family history of psychopathology.

Method: 8–17-year-old youth of parents with BD (n = 31, “BD-risk”), youth of parents with MDD (n = 49, “MDD-risk”), and demographically similar HC (n = 31, “HC”) were examined using the Delis–Kaplan Executive Functioning System Trail Making Test. Seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) was collected from a subset of 88 participants (25 BD-risk, 37 MDD-risk, 26 HC) to investigate group differences in RSFC related to visuospatial processing.

Results: BD-risk and MDD-risk offspring had impaired sequencing and task switching, demonstrated by reduced scores on visual scanning, F(2, 108) = 4.12, p = .02, number sequencing, F(2, 88) = 4.75, p = .01, letter sequencing, F(2, 108) = 4.24, p = .02, and number–letter sequencing, F(2, 108) = 4.66, p = .01, compared to scores in HC. RSFC between the posterior cingulate (PCC) and clusters in the subcallosal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus significantly differed among HC, BD-risk, and MDD-risk groups. PCC-subcallosal/limbic RSFC was positively coupled in the MDD-risk and BD-risk groups and negatively coupled in HCs.

Conclusions: Youth at familial risk for mood disorders demonstrate visuospatial deficits early in the processing stream. Improved methods for identifying at-risk children with the earliest possible neurocognitive impairments may inform remediation strategies that could prevent mood disorders.

KEYWORDS:

• Bipolar disorder
• family risk
• major depressive disorder
• offspring
• resting state
• task switching
• visuospatial processing

Acknowledgments

We would like to express appreciation to our research participants and families and members of our Pediatric Emotion and Resilience Lab for their contributions to this work.

Disclosure statement

Dr. Singh receives research support from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Aging, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, Stanford's Child Health Research Institute, Johnson & Johnson, and Neuronetics.  She has been on the advisory board for Sunovion.  No potential conflicts of interest were reported by any other authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health [grant number K23MH085919]; Stanford Child Health Research Institute.