Role of social cognition for young adults with recurrent depression

Aim: To investigate the results of social cognition tests on young adults with either recurrent or nonrecurrent depression. This study tested three hypotheses: (1) young adults with recurrent depressive episodes (>2 episodes) would perform significantly poorer on social cognition tasks than nonrecurrent depression (1 or 2 episodes only); (2) deficits in negatively balanced prosody would be associated with deficits in other cognitive tasks due to the requirement of extra cognitive resources; and (3) anxiety severity not depression severity would be a predictor of recurrent depression. Design: Cross-sectional design with purposive sampling. Purposive sampling was used to target young adults who had experienced a depressive episode. Method: Eighty-four young adults (M=21.69 years, SD=4.14; 61 females, 23 males) with recurrent depression (>2 major depressive episodes) and 36 young adults (M=20.03 years, SD=3.23; 29 females, 7 males) with non-recurrent depression (1 or 2 major depressive episodes only) completed a cognitive battery and semi structured interviews including a clinical interview. Results: The recurrent depression group performed significantly poorer than the non-recurrent group in prosody matching (p=.015), but not in facial affect (p=.365). By grouping individual prosodymatching items into happy, surprise, afraid, sad, angry, neutral, and sarcasm items it was found that the recurrent group performed significantly poorer than the non-recurrent group in sarcasm items (p=.004) only. As prosody matching did not correlate with depression severity (p=.292) or anxiety severity (p=.345), prosody may be a trait deficit. Using linear regression with bootstrapping negatively balanced prosody (sad, angry, surprised) was significantly predicted by the Nback (1) task (p=.005). A logistic regression model with bootstrapping was run to determine if sarcasm items would still be independently associated with recurrent depression when co-varied with age, depression severity, and anxiety severity. Age (p=.009) and sarcasm items (p=.035) were both independently associated while depression severity (p=.824) and anxiety severity (p=.100) were not. Therefore both anxiety and depression severity were not predictors of the recurrent depression group. Omitting "Age" from the logistic regression the significance of sarcasm items increased to p=.004. Conclusion: Prosody matching (sarcasm items) a possible trait deficit may play a role in differentiating recurrent and non-recurrent depression

High school subject selection in depression related cognitive tests

Aim: To investigate the effect of high school subject selection on cognitive tests relevant to young adults with depression. It was hypothesised that young adults (17-35) who studied advanced 76 mathematics rather than ordinary mathematics would perform significantly better on cognitive tests associated with problem solving such as Card Sort (perseverative errors) and Tower of London. Design: Cross-sectional design with purposive sampling. Purposive sampling was used to target young adults who had experienced depressive symptoms. Method: Thirty seven young adults (M=20.05 years, SD=2.97; 28 female, 9 male) studied advanced mathematics and 78 young adults (M=20.19 years, SD=3.61; 57 female, 21 male) studied ordinary mathematics. Participants were classified as either the "advanced mathematics" group: scored at least one high achievement (B grade) with no fails in advanced mathematics A, advanced mathematics B, physics, or chemistry; or the "ordinary mathematics" group who studied ordinary mathematics in their senior year at high school. Participants completed a battery of cognitive tests and semi structured interviews to determine depression severity and disorder classification. Results: Advanced mathematics group had significantly less: perseverative errors (p=.009), participants with depression (p=.004), depression severity (p=.002), anxiety severity (p=.015), number of depressive episodes (p=.035), and intelligence measure (p=.027) than the ordinary mathematics group. Other cognitive tests where the advanced group performed significantly better than the ordinary mathematics group included word recall trial 1 (p=.001), trial 2 (p=.036), and trial 3 (p=.023). A logistic regression with bootstrapping was run and demonstrated that perseverative errors (p=.016) as well as word recall trial 1 (p=.001) were still significant predictors of mathematics group when covaried with an intelligence measure, depression and anxiety variables. Conclusion: Young adults who studied advanced mathematics had significantly fewer perseverative errors than young adults who studied ordinary mathematics even when controlling for differences in depression. School subject selection should be included in depression studies to better evaluate whether it is a mediating factor for perseverative errors which are considered a possible trait cognitive deficit for depression

High school subject selection in depression related cognitive tests

Aim: To investigate the effect of high school subject selection on cognitive tests relevant to young adults with depression. It was hypothesised that young adults (17-35) who studied advanced 76 mathematics rather than ordinary mathematics would perform significantly better on cognitive tests associated with problem solving such as Card Sort (perseverative errors) and Tower of London. Design: Cross-sectional design with purposive sampling. Purposive sampling was used to target young adults who had experienced depressive symptoms. Method: Thirty seven young adults (M=20.05 years, SD=2.97; 28 female, 9 male) studied advanced mathematics and 78 young adults (M=20.19 years, SD=3.61; 57 female, 21 male) studied ordinary mathematics. Participants were classified as either the "advanced mathematics" group: scored at least one high achievement (B grade) with no fails in advanced mathematics A, advanced mathematics B, physics, or chemistry; or the "ordinary mathematics" group who studied ordinary mathematics in their senior year at high school. Participants completed a battery of cognitive tests and semi structured interviews to determine depression severity and disorder classification. Results: Advanced mathematics group had significantly less: perseverative errors (p=.009), participants with depression (p=.004), depression severity (p=.002), anxiety severity (p=.015), number of depressive episodes (p=.035), and intelligence measure (p=.027) than the ordinary mathematics group. Other cognitive tests where the advanced group performed significantly better than the ordinary mathematics group included word recall trial 1 (p=.001), trial 2 (p=.036), and trial 3 (p=.023). A logistic regression with bootstrapping was run and demonstrated that perseverative errors (p=.016) as well as word recall trial 1 (p=.001) were still significant predictors of mathematics group when covaried with an intelligence measure, depression and anxiety variables. Conclusion: Young adults who studied advanced mathematics had significantly fewer perseverative errors than young adults who studied ordinary mathematics even when controlling for differences in depression. School subject selection should be included in depression studies to better evaluate whether it is a mediating factor for perseverative errors which are considered a possible trait cognitive deficit for depression

Tumour necrosis factor - alpha mediated mechanisms of cognitive dysfunction

AbstractBernhard T Baune, Marie-Lou Camara, Harris Eyre, Catharine Jawahar, Helen Anscomb, Heinrich Körne

TNF-alpha and its receptors modulate complex behaviours and neurotrophins in transgenic mice

UnlabelledTumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) plays an important role not only in immunity but also in the normal functioning of the central nervous system (CNS). At physiological levels, studies have shown TNF-α is essential to maintain synaptic scaling and thus influence learning and memory formation while also playing a role in modulating pathological states of anxiety and depression. TNF-α signals mainly through its two receptors, TNF-R1 and TNF-R2, however the exact role that these receptors play in TNF-α mediated behavioural phenotypes is yet to be determined.MethodsWe have assessed TNF(-/-), TNF-R1(-/-) and TNF-R2(-/-) mice against C57BL/6 wild-type (WT) mice from 12 weeks of age in order to evaluate measures of spatial memory and learning in the Barnes maze (BM) and Y-maze, as well as other behaviours such as exploration, social interaction, anxiety and depression-like behaviour in a battery of tests. We have also measured hippocampal and prefrontal cortex levels of the neurotrophins nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) as well as used immunohistochemical analyses to measure number of proliferating cells (Ki67) and immature neurons (DCX) within the dentate gyrus.ResultsWe have shown that young adult TNF(-/-) and TNF-R1(-/-) mice displayed impairments in learning and memory in the BM and Y-maze, while TNF-R2(-/-) mice showed good memory but slow learning in these tests. TNF(-/-)and TNF-R2(-/-) mice also demonstrated a decrease in anxiety like behaviour compared to WT mice. ELISA analyses showed TNF(-/-) and TNF-R2(-/-) mice had lower levels of NGF compared to WT mice.ConclusionThese results indicate that while lack of TNF-α can decrease anxiety-like behaviour in mice, certain basal levels of TNF-α are required for the development of normal cognition. Furthermore our results suggest that both TNF-R1 and TNF-R2 signalling play a role in normal CNS function, with knockout of either receptor impairing cognition on the Barnes maze.Marie Lou Camara, Frances Corrigan, Emily J. Jaehne, M. Catharine Jawahar, Helen Anscomb, Heinrich Koerner, Bernhard T. Baun