Age effects on trail making test during acute depressive and manic episode

Abstract

Impairment of executive functions and attention has been found in patients with acute depressive episodes but has rarely been investigated in manic patients to date. At the same time, executive functions decline with age. Thus, it is currently a matter of debate how to best measure decreased executive performance in elderly patients with affective disorders. In our study, we examined 30 depressed patients, 28 manic patients, and 30 healthy subjects of all age groups, using the Trail Making Test (TMT). Both depressed and manic patients needed twice as long as healthy subjects to perform the TMT Part A. In addition to this reduced performance due to affective disorders, we were also able to detect a decline in performance due to age. One could thus postulate that age and affective disorders each influence a different neuropsychological function, age affecting executive performance and affective disorders affecting attention, as measured in both cases by the TMT.