NCT02476331

A Trial of Cognitive Training in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder

A Randomized Control Trial of Cognitive Training in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder

• Status: Withdrawn
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 0 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Calgary · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Bipolar disorder (BD) is characterized by extreme changes in mood and emotion dysregulation. Mood changes are episodic in nature, with distinct periods of mania, depression, and asymptomatic periods of euthymia. In addition to impairments in mood, cognitive impairments are a common feature of the disorder. These cognitive impairments persist during periods of euthymia and are associated with negative clinical and psychosocial outcomes. Specifically, individuals with BD show impairments in executive functions. Recent studies show that emotion regulation can be down-regulated by taxing executive functions, and it can be improved with working memory training, a specific component of executive functions. These initial studies show that emotion regulation is under executive control in healthy individuals; however, the nature of this relationship is not well understood in populations that are affected by impairments in both executive control and emotion regulation. Previous work on cognitive training has not targeted specific cognitive domains with an emphasis on understanding the underlying mechanisms that promote change. Moreover, well-controlled randomized control trial (RCT) studies are needed in order to provide high quality evidence to inform the efficacy of cognitive training interventions for psychiatric populations. The aim of the proposed study is to use a commercially available cognitive training program to study the effects of working memory training on cognitive, clinical, and psychosocial outcomes in patients with BD. We hypothesize that training working memory will lead to improvements in cognitive and emotional functioning, leading to downstream changes that will positively impact untrained outcomes, such as mood and community functioning.

Conditions

• Bipolar Disorder

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Working memory training	The neurocognitive training program will be provided by an online platform called BrainGymmer (https://www.braingymmer.com/en/brain-games/). The experimental group will complete the working memory training, which involves three games: N-back, Multi-Memory, and Moving Memory. These games are designed to engage processes involving updating and manipulation of information. All of the training games provided by BrainGymmer are adaptive, meaning that the level of difficulty increases as users develop expertise on a given task. Participants randomized to the cognitive training arm will complete the training games for 30 minutes per day, 5 days a week, for a total of 10 weeks.

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-08-01
• Primary completion: 2017-08-01
• Completion: 2017-08-01
• First posted: 2015-06-19
• Last updated: 2016-05-17

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Canada