Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
J Affect Disord. 2013 May;147(1-3):397-400. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2012.08.020. Epub 2012 Sep 11.
Aberrant attentional processes in individuals with mood disorders - bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) - have been well documented. This study examined whether unaffected youth at familial risk for mood disorders would exhibit poor alerting, orienting, and executive attention relative to age-matched controls.
A sample of youth (8-17 years old) having one parent with either BD or MDD (Mood-Risk, n=29) and youth having healthy parents (HC, n=27) completed the Attention Network Test-Short version (ANT-S), which assesses alerting, orienting, and executive attention.
Relative to HCs, the Mood-Risk group had significantly slower reaction times on an index of executive attention, but no differences on indices of alerting or orienting. There were no differences between the two at-risk groups (i.e., youth with BD parent vs. youth with MDD parent) on any ANT-S measure.
The current study is limited by its cross-sectional design, small sample size, and failure to control for familial environmental factors.
The findings extend previous results indicating that altered executive attention may represent an endophenotype for mood disorders in at-risk youth.
心境障碍患者（双相情感障碍和重度抑郁症）的注意力过程异常已得到充分证实。本研究旨在探究心境障碍家族遗传风险的未患病青年的警觉、定向和执行注意是否相对同龄对照组较差。
本研究采用了一种样本（8-17 岁），其中包括一名父母患有双相情感障碍或重度抑郁症的青年（心境风险组，n=29）和父母健康的青年（HC，n=27）。这些青年完成了注意力网络测试-短版（ANT-S），该测试评估了警觉、定向和执行注意。
与 HC 相比，心境风险组在执行注意的指数上反应时间明显较慢，但在警觉或定向指数上没有差异。在任何 ANT-S 测量指标上，BD 父母的青年和 MDD 父母的青年这两个高危群体之间均无差异。
本研究存在一些局限性，包括横断面设计、样本量小以及未能控制家族环境因素。
研究结果扩展了以前的结果，表明改变的执行注意可能代表了风险青年心境障碍的一个内表型。
