Copenhagen Affective Disorder research Centre (CADIC), Psychiatric Centre Copenhagen, Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet, Denmark.
Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
J Affect Disord. 2022 Dec 1;318:217-223. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2022.09.004. Epub 2022 Sep 8.
Emotion dysregulation has been suggested as an endophenotype of bipolar disorder (BD). Neuroimaging studies show aberrant neural activity during emotion regulation in remitted patients with BD and their unaffected first-degree relatives (UR) compared to healthy controls (HC). However, behavioural studies produce conflicting - generally negative findings - possibly due to limited sensitivity and ecological validity of current behavioural paradigms.
This study aimed to explore emotion regulation in BD (n = 30) and UR (n = 26) relative to HC (n = 47) by using a novel emotion regulation task in virtual reality (VR). Participants were instructed to either react naturally to, or dampen, their emotional response to highly positive or highly negative scenarios presented in first-person 360-degree spherically camera-recorded VR environments. Participants also completed a more traditional computerised task of emotion regulation for comparison purposes.
Patients with BD exhibited difficulties with down-regulating their negative emotions in the VR paradigm compared to HC and UR (ps ≤ .04), whereas UR did not differ from HC (p = .97). There was no emotion regulation difference between groups in the more traditional computerised task (ps ≥ .40).
The small sample size limits generalisability.
The results suggest trait-related reduced ability to down-regulate negative emotions in BD patients compared to HC in the VR paradigm, but not in the more traditional task of emotion regulation. This may indicate that VR provides a more sensitive measure relative to traditional paradigms. The findings provided no support for aberrant emotional regulation as an endophenotype of BD given the normal emotion regulation performance in UR.
情绪调节障碍已被认为是双相情感障碍（BD）的一种内表型。神经影像学研究表明，与健康对照组（HC）相比，缓解期 BD 患者及其未受影响的一级亲属（UR）在情绪调节期间存在异常的神经活动。然而，行为研究得出了相互矛盾的——通常是负面的发现——这可能是由于当前行为范式的敏感性和生态有效性有限。
本研究旨在通过虚拟现实（VR）中的一种新的情绪调节任务来探索 BD（n=30）和 UR（n=26）相对于 HC（n=47）的情绪调节。参与者被指示要么对呈现的高度积极或高度消极情景自然反应，要么抑制自己的情绪反应，这些情景以第一人称 360 度球形摄像机记录的 VR 环境呈现。参与者还完成了一项更传统的计算机化情绪调节任务以进行比较。
与 HC 和 UR 相比，BD 患者在 VR 范式中调节负面情绪的能力存在困难（p 值≤.04），而 UR 与 HC 没有差异（p=0.97）。在更传统的计算机化任务中，各组之间没有情绪调节差异（p 值≥.40）。
样本量小限制了普遍性。
结果表明，与 HC 相比，BD 患者在 VR 范式中表现出与特质相关的降低调节负面情绪的能力，但在更传统的情绪调节任务中则不然。这可能表明 VR 相对于传统范式提供了更敏感的测量。鉴于 UR 的情绪调节正常，这些发现并未支持情绪调节异常作为 BD 的内表型。
