This study aimed to examine whether patients with bipolar disorder (BD) perceive differences in the encoding and retrieving of autobiographical information related to events with different emotional valence. For this purpose, an experimental task based on the virtual reality paradigm was administrated to 14 euthymic BD patients and 23 healthy controls. All participants also had a neuropsychological assessment and completed self­report questionnaires as to mood and psychopathological symptoms. BD patients, when compared to adult controls, recognized more information associated with negative lifelike events and retrieved less information related to positive events. We suggest that changes in processing negative information are caused by the activation of maladaptive emotion­regulation processes, and changes in processing positive information arise from insufficient elaboration of memory traces or from suppression/distortion processes acting during retrieval.

Este trabalho foi financiado por uma bolsa de investigação (SFRH/BD/35934/2007) atribuída à primeira autora pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.

bipolar disorder,autobiographical memory,emotional memory,virtual reality,neuropsychological assessment

• Ciências da Computação e da Informação - Ciências Naturais
• Outras Ciências Médicas - Ciências Médicas
• Psicologia - Ciências Sociais