Investigating gaze processing in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder. Impaired sensitivity to intention and emotion, but preservation of social attentional orienting

Euthymic Bipolar Disorder (BD) has been associated with subtle impairment in face processing. However, it is not known whether their difficulties extend to the processing of gaze. Methods: In the present study, two tasks, both of which rely on the ability to make use of the eye-region of a pictured face, were used: the Reading the Mind in theEyes test and the Eye-gaze cueing task. Compared to healthy controls, BD patients were impaired at judging mental state from images of the face but showed normal susceptibility to the direction of gaze as an attentional cue. These findings suggest thatBD patients present selective gaze processing impairment, limited to the sensitivity to intention and emotion. This impairment could account at least partially for the higher levels of interpersonal problems generally observed in BD