Individuals with depressive tendencies experience difficulty in forgetting negative material: two mechanisms revealed by ERP data in the directed forgetting paradigm

Abstract

Although previous studies have shown that individuals with depressive tendencies have deficits in forgetting negative material, the detailed underlying neural mechanisms have not been elucidated. This study examined the intentional forgetting of negative and neutral material in individuals with depressive tendencies in two phases. In the study phase, the participants performed a directed forgetting task, where a total of 320 words were presented to them, each followed by an instructive cue to forget or remember the previously presented word. Subsequently, in the memory recognition test phase, the participants completed the "old or new discrimination task". The results indicated that individuals with depressive tendencies had difficulties suppressing the memory encoding of negative words, while the suppression of memory encoding of neutral words was relatively intact. Moreover, individuals with depressive tendencies displayed enhanced word-evoked P2 and late positive potential for negative items, as well as enhanced cue-evoked P1 and N2 for the negative items that were required to be forgotten, as compared to individuals without depressive tendencies. Based on these results, we propose two mechanisms that may contribute to the failure of forgetting negative material in mild depression: (1) inefficient memory suppression and early selective attention, and (2) excessive preliminary processing.According to Beck's cognitive model of depression, depressed individuals exhibit excessive negative biases in many aspects of cognitive processes, such as attention and memory, as compared to healthy controls 1,2 . This negative bias plays a critical role in the etiology as well as the maintenance of depressive symptoms (e.g. the ruminative thinking style) [3][4][5][6] . The majority of previous studies focused on the biased processing of emotional information in the aspects of perception, attention, memory and interpretation, neglecting the functions of inhibition and cognitive control in the depressed population 2,7

Effects of Depressive Symptoms, Feelings, and Interoception on Reward-Based Decision-Making: Investigation Using Reinforcement Learning Model

“…The validity of this interpretation is corroborated by the result of this study that positive feelings were correlated with learning rate α. Further, as per previous findings, when individuals with severe depression are presented with both neutral and negative stimuli, they selectively remember only the negative stimuli and have difficulty suppressing the encoding of such stimuli [46].…”

Neural substrates for anticipation and consumption of social and monetary incentives in depression

“…Exclusion criteria included: (i) any lifetime Axis I disorders other than depression according to Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders, Research Version, Non-patient Edition (SCID-I/NP; First et al ., 2002); (ii) high level of anxiety, i.e. students with STAI-T scores ranked above 75% of the distribution (Xie et al ., 2018); (iii) seizure disorder; (iv) history of head injury with possible neurological sequelae; (v) self-reported prior use of any psychoactive drugs especially medication for depression; and (vi) current alcohol drug dependence.…”

Electrophysiological Characteristics in Depressive Personality Disorder: An Event-Related Potential Study

“…A great deal of evidence has accumulated in clinical neurophysiology concerning cognitive functions in depressive patients (Mao et al, 2005; Krompinger and Simons, 2011; Dai and Feng, 2012; Zhao et al, 2015; Kiang et al, 2017; Xie et al, 2018). However, only a few studies have focused on the depressive personality disorder (DPS) in healthy young populations (Shimizu et al, 2006).…”

“…The results indicated that individuals with depressive tendencies had difficulties suppressing the memory encoding with negative words, while the suppression of memory encoding of neutral words was relatively intact. Furthermore, compared to individuals without depressive tendencies, depressive individuals had larger word-evoked P2 and late positive potential for negative items, as well as enhanced cue-evoked P1 and N2 for the negative items which were required to be forgotten (Xie et al, 2018).…”