Is There a Valence-Specific Pattern in Emotional Conflict in Major Depressive Disorder? An Exploratory Psychological Study

Objective: Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) clinically exhibit a deficit in positive emotional processing and are often distracted by especially negative emotional stimuli. Such emotional-cognitive interference in turn hampers the cognitive abilities of patients in their ongoing task. While the psychological correlates of such emotional conflict have been well identified in healthy subjects, possible alterations of emotional conflict in depressed patients remain to be investigated. We conducted an exploratory psychological study to investigate emotional conflict in MDD. We also distinguished depression-related stimuli from negative stimuli in order to check whether the depression-related distractors will induce enhanced conflict in MDD. Methods: A typical word-face Stroop paradigm was adopted. In order to account for valence-specificities in MDD, we included positive and general negative as well as depression-related words in the study. Results: MDD patients demonstrated a specific pattern of emotional conflict clearly distinguishable from the healthy control group. In MDD, the positive distractor words did not significantly interrupt the processing of the negative target faces, while they did in healthy subjects. On the other hand, the depression-related distractor words induced significant emotional conflict to the positive target faces in MDD patients but not in the healthy control group. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated for the first time an altered valence-specific pattern in emotional conflict in MD

Altered Negative Unconscious Processing in Major Depressive Disorder: An Exploratory Neuropsychological Study

Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been characterized by abnormalities in emotional processing. However, what remains unclear is whether MDD also shows deficits in the unconscious processing of either positive or negative emotions. We conducted a psychological study in healthy and MDD subjects to investigate unconscious emotion processing and its valence-specific alterations in MDD patients.We combined a well established paradigm for unconscious visual processing, the continuous flash suppression, with positive and negative emotional valences to detect the attentional preference evoked by the invisible emotional facial expressions.Healthy subjects showed an attentional bias for negative emotions in the unconscious condition while this valence bias remained absent in MDD patients. In contrast, this attentional bias diminished in the conscious condition for both healthy subjects and MDD.Our findings demonstrate for the first time valence-specific deficits specifically in the unconscious processing of emotions in MDD; this may have major implications for subsequent neurobiological investigations as well as for clinical diagnosis and therapy

Is there an association between depressive and urinary symptoms during and after pregnancy?

Depressive symptoms and urinary symptoms are both highly prevalent in pregnancy. In the general population, an association is reported between urinary symptoms and depressive symptoms. The association of depressive and urinary symptoms has not yet been assessed in pregnancy. In this study, we assessed (1) the prevalence of depressive symptoms, over-active bladder (OAB) syndrome, urge urinary incontinence (UUI) and stress urinary incontinence (SUI) during and after pregnancy using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and the Urogenital Distress Inventory (UDI) and (2) the association of depressive symptoms with urinary incontinence and over-active bladder syndrome during and after pregnancy, controlling for confounding socioeconomic, psychosocial, behavioural and biomedical factors in a cohort of healthy nulliparous women. Our data show a significant increase in prevalence of depressive symptoms, UUI, SUI and OAB during pregnancy and a significant reduction in prevalence of depressive symptoms, SUI and OAB after childbirth. UUI prevalence did not significantly decrease after childbirth. In univariate analysis, urinary incontinence and the OAB syndrome were significantly associated with a CES-D score indicative of a possible clinical depression at 36 weeks gestation. However, after adjusting for possible confounding factors, only the OAB syndrome remained significantly associated (OR 4.4 [1.8–10.5]). No association was found between depressive and urinary symptoms at 1 year post-partum. Only OAB was independently associated with depressive symptoms during pregnancy. Possible explanations for this association are discussed

Inter-hemispheric EEG coherence analysis in Parkinson's disease : Assessing brain activity during emotion processing

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is not only characterized by its prominent motor symptoms but also associated with disturbances in cognitive and emotional functioning. The objective of the present study was to investigate the influence of emotion processing on inter-hemispheric electroencephalography (EEG) coherence in PD. Multimodal emotional stimuli (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust) were presented to 20 PD patients and 30 age-, education level-, and gender-matched healthy controls (HC) while EEG was recorded. Inter-hemispheric coherence was computed from seven homologous EEG electrode pairs (AF3–AF4, F7–F8, F3–F4, FC5–FC6, T7–T8, P7–P8, and O1–O2) for delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands. In addition, subjective ratings were obtained for a representative of emotional stimuli. Interhemispherically, PD patients showed significantly lower coherence in theta, alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands than HC during emotion processing. No significant changes were found in the delta frequency band coherence. We also found that PD patients were more impaired in recognizing negative emotions (sadness, fear, anger, and disgust) than relatively positive emotions (happiness and surprise). Behaviorally, PD patients did not show impairment in emotion recognition as measured by subjective ratings. These findings suggest that PD patients may have an impairment of inter-hemispheric functional connectivity (i.e., a decline in cortical connectivity) during emotion processing. This study may increase the awareness of EEG emotional response studies in clinical practice to uncover potential neurophysiologic abnormalities

Prospective mental imagery as its link with anxiety and depression in prisoners

Mental imagery is known to play a key role in the development and maintenance of depression and anxiety. Prisoners commonly experience psychological distress, but interventions to address this are currently lacking. We aimed to examine the link between prospective mental imagery and anxiety and depression among prisoners. One hundred twenty-three male prisoners from a Category C prison in southwest England participated in the study. They completed the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and the General Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) to measure whether they experience depression and/or anxiety symptoms. Furthermore, they completed additional questionnaires to evaluate their prospective mental imagery. Results showed that 67.5% of prisoners presented with more depression symptoms and 27.7% with more anxiety symptoms. Supporting earlier findings, our data revealed that some dimensions of prospective mental imagery were significantly related with increased anxiety and depression symptoms in prisoners. Namely, intrusive negative personally relevant imagery was a positive predictor and likelihood of positive events a negative predictor of both anxiety and depression symptoms. The perceived likelihood of negative events was a positive predictor of depression. Intrusive verbal thought was a positive predictor of anxiety. The obtained results suggest the need to develop interventions not only targeting the reduction of prospective negative imagery but also the enhancement of positive mental imagery

The specific role of relationship life events in the onset of depression during pregnancy and the postpartum

Background The precipitating role of life events in the onset of depression is well-established. The present study sought to examine whether life events hypothesised to be personally salient would be more strongly associated with depression than other life events. In a sample of women making the first transition to parenthood, we hypothesised that negative events related to the partner relationship would be particularly salient and thus more strongly predictive of depression than other events. Methods A community-based sample of 316 first-time mothers stratified by psychosocial risk completed interviews at 32 weeks gestation and 29 weeks postpartum to assess dated occurrence of life events and depression onsets from conception to 29 weeks postpartum. Complete data was available from 273 (86.4%). Cox proportional hazards regression was used to examine risk for onset of depression in the 6 months following a relationship event versus other events, after accounting for past history of depression and other potential confounders. Results 52 women (19.0%) experienced an onset of depression between conception and 6 months postpartum. Both relationship events (Hazard Ratio = 2.1, p = .001) and other life events (Hazard Ratio = 1.3, p = .020) were associated with increased risk for depression onset; however, relationship events showed a significantly greater risk for depression than did other life events (p = .044). Conclusions The results are consistent with the hypothesis that personally salient events are more predictive of depression onset than other events. Further, they indicate the clinical significance of events related to the partner relationship during pregnancy and the postpartum

The CogBIAS longitudinal study protocol: cognitive and genetic factors influencing psychological functioning in adolescence.

BACKGROUND: Optimal psychological development is dependent upon a complex interplay between individual and situational factors. Investigating the development of these factors in adolescence will help to improve understanding of emotional vulnerability and resilience. The CogBIAS longitudinal study (CogBIAS-L-S) aims to combine cognitive and genetic approaches to investigate risk and protective factors associated with the development of mood and impulsivity-related outcomes in an adolescent sample. METHODS: CogBIAS-L-S is a three-wave longitudinal study of typically developing adolescents conducted over 4 years, with data collection at age 12, 14 and 16. At each wave participants will undergo multiple assessments including a range of selective cognitive processing tasks (e.g. attention bias, interpretation bias, memory bias) and psychological self-report measures (e.g. anxiety, depression, resilience). Saliva samples will also be collected at the baseline assessment for genetic analyses. Multilevel statistical analyses will be performed to investigate the developmental trajectory of cognitive biases on psychological functioning, as well as the influence of genetic moderation on these relationships. DISCUSSION: CogBIAS-L-S represents the first longitudinal study to assess multiple cognitive biases across adolescent development and the largest study of its kind to collect genetic data. It therefore provides a unique opportunity to understand how genes and the environment influence the development and maintenance of cognitive biases and provide insight into risk and protective factors that may be key targets for intervention.This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement no: [324176]