Grant: Project Grant

Depression is a highly recurrent disorder, underscoring the need to identify risk factors for relapse. Cognitive control involves a set of cognitive processes that allow selective processing of information, which includes inhibiting irrelevant information, shifting from one task to another, and updating working memory. People with depression have difficulty exerting cognitive control over emotional information, and these cognitive difficulties are associated with functional and occupational impairment. People who have recovered from depression do not exhibit cognitive control dysfunction. However, negative mood or stress may activate depressive cognitive processes, such that during periods of mood decline, previously depressed people have difficulty controlling the processing of emotional information, thereby increasing risk of prolonged negative mood and relapse to depression. The objectives of this study are to evaluate the hypotheses that: 1) previously depressed people will show impairments in cognitive control over emotional information when in a negative mood state compared to a baseline mood state; and 2) mood-induced impairments in cognitive control will predict relapse to depression. A sample of currently, remitted, and never depressed individuals will complete computer tasks to assess the primary components of cognitive control: inhibition, set-shifting, and updating. Tasks will be administered in a baseline mood state in one study session and after a negative mood induction in a second session, which will allow us to evaluate cognitive processing in response to negative mood. Remitted depressed participants will enter a 1-year follow-up period during which they will be assessed every 2 weeks for depression. This study will test a novel cognitive risk factor for the recurrence of depression, which can help us to identify people who are most at risk of relapse, and develop targeted treatment approaches to reduce this risk.