Depressed mood in multiple sclerosis: Relationship to capacity-demanding memory and attentional functioning.

Abstract

Because it is theorized that depression results in reduced available attentional capacity that, in turn, can explain the impaired performance on capacity-demanding tasks in depressed individuals, the authors predicted that multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with depressed mood would have difficulty with these types of tasks. Twenty depressed mood MS participants were compared with 41 nondepressed mood MS participants and 8 nondepressed mood controls on 5 attentional capacity-demanding clinical memory and attentional tasks and 3 tasks with minimal capacity demands. Depressed mood MS patients performed significantly worse than both nondepressed mood groups on the 3 speeded capacity-demanding attentional measures but not on any of the tasks requiring few capacity demands, supporting the authors' predictions. The possibility that the impaired performance of depressed mood MS patients on speeded attentional tasks was mediated by reduced verbal working memory capacity, impaired deployment of executive strategies that access working memory capacity, or psychomotor slowing is explored.

Oralmotor slowing in multiple sclerosis: Relationship to neuropsychological tasks requiring an oral response

“…One participant (an MS patient) was unable to complete the 2s PASAT. Following a strategy taken in our prior work (Arnett et al, 1999) and by Dikmen and colleagues (Dikmen et al, 1995), we assigned a value one point below the lowest point of the distribution for the 2s PASAT for this participant. This approach did not significantly change the results, but we decided on it in the interest of providing the most complete picture of our sample.…”

Differential diagnosis, discerning depression from cognition

“…35 Possible explanations of these findings were as follows: (i) that cognitive capacity in general is not affected by depression in patients with MS; (ii) that depression may be associated with an involvement of discrete cognitive functions such as verbal working memory capacity or executive dysfunction reducing the access to verbal working memory; and (iii) that the findings were the consequence of psychomotor slowing. 35,36 In a further study involving the same groups of subjects, the authors added tasks specifically evaluating working memory with verbal stimuli, tracking in particular the function of the central executive subsystem (namely the Reading Span Test). 37 In this study, depressed MS patients performed significantly worse than the other two groups on the working memory test.…”

Evidence-based guideline: Assessment and management of psychiatric disorders in individuals with MS

“…With effective treatments widely available for several emotional disorders, this component of the burden of MS can be reduced. 1,2 Undetected and untreated mental illness may worsen functioning 3 and quality of life, [4][5][6][7][8] decrease treatment adherence, 9 and increase risk of suicide. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Improved detection, diagnosis, and treatment practices in medical settings where individuals with emotional disorders are often first seen would help ameliorate these negative outcomes.…”