Reading the mind in the eyes
The “Reading the mind in the eyes task” (Eyes Task; [21]) is the most widely used test of affective theory of mind (ToM) in adults. This task requires participants to judge the complex mental states depicted in pictures of the eye region using a forced choice among four adjectives (e.g., bored, irritated, comforting, playful). Deficits in the affective ToM assessed by using the Eyes task have been observed across a range of psychiatric conditions characterized by social and interpersonal dysfunctions, including autism spectrum disorder [21], schizophrenia [22], and unipolar major depressive disorder [23]. To our knowledge, only two studies have employed the Eye task to assess the decoding of mental states in euthymic bipolar patients, yielding mixed results: difficulties in TOM have been observed in one study [6], but not in another [24]. Therefore, further studies are surely essential to shed light on this issue.