Comparing Neurocognitive Profile of Patients with Borderline Personality and BipolarII Disorders

Objective: The present study was conducted to compare neurocognitive profile in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and bipolar II disorder (BDII) and to find whether BPD can be classified as one of bipolar spectrum disorders. #xD; Method: A total of 35 patients with BPD and 35 euthymic patients with BDII disorder were selected by convenience sampling method. These 2 groups were compared with 30 healthy individuals using neurocognitive battery tests that assessed cognitive flexibility and setshifting, response inhibition, problemsolving, decisionmaking, and sustained and selective attention. Data were analyzed using independent t test, X2 and ANOVA. #xD; Results: Patients with euthymic BDII and BPD had poorer performance than the healthy group in most neurocognitive domains (p lt;0.05). Both patient groups showed similar functions in cognitive flexibility and setshifting, decisionmaking, sustained and selective attention, and problemsolving (p lt;0.05). BPD patients had more elevated response inhibition deficits than BDII patients (P lt;0.05). Also, BPD patients had poorer performance in planning compared to BDII patients (P lt;0.05). #xD; Conclusion: The results provided empirical support for previous findings which have reported that patients with BPD and BDII show neurocognitive dysfunctions. Despite the similarity between these 2 clinical groups in terms of neurocognitive profile in this study, more extensive studies are needed to confirm the hypothesis that BPD can be conceptualized as one of bipolar spectrum disorders.