- The rate
of perceptual alternation declines with age.
This decline could reflect an intrinsic
effect of aging or a gradual change over time in some environmental
variable, such as diet.
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- Subjects
with bipolar disorder appear to show a more rapid decline with
age in the rate of perceptual alternation.
- The rate
appears to decline at an intermediate rate in subjects who have
close relatives with bipolar disorder.
However, slow perceptual alternation,
by itself is not diagnostic for bipolar disorder. The range
of variation for subjects with bipolar disorder falls within the
range exhibited by control subjects.
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- Subjects
with psychiatric diagnoses other than bipolar disorder also appear
to show a more rapid decline with age in the rate of perceptual
alternation.
If significant, this similarity among
subjects with varying diagnoses might indicate some underlying
commonality among different mental disorders, or it might reflect
ambiguity in psychiatric diagnosis.
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