Longitudinal Relations Between Depressive Symptoms and Executive Functions From Adolescence to Early Adulthood: A Twin Study

Abstract

Depression is associated with deficits in executive functions (EFs)-cognitive control abilities that regulate goal-directed thoughts and actions-but the etiology of these associations is unclear. We examined the relations between depressive symptoms and multiple EF latent variables in a population-based sample of 439 twin pairs assessed at mean ages 12, 17, and 23 years. Greater depressive symptoms negatively related to a Common EF factor capturing shared variance across response inhibition, working memory updating, and mental set shifting tasks, and also negatively related to an Updating-Specific factor, but not a Shifting-Specific factor. Cross-lagged panel models suggested that the Common EF correlations reflected within-wave associations rather than prospective effects, whereas the Updating-Specific correlations reflected associations of earlier depression levels with later Updating-Specific ability. Twin models were consistent with a model in which Common EF and Updating-Specific abilities relate to depression through correlated genetic risk, with no significant environmental correlations.

Genome-Wide Association Study of Over 427,000 Individuals Establishes Executive Functioning as a Neurocognitive Basis of Psychiatric Disorders Influenced by GABAergic Processes

“…It is likely these fast-synaptic processes influencing cEF could further elucidate mechanisms of psychiatric disorders, as cEF was genetically correlated with nearly all psychiatric disorders. We found novel genetic associations with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, alcohol dependence, and anorexia nervosa, and replicated a genetic association of cEF with depression 40 . These results are in line with past literature, suggesting cEF is broadly genetically associated with psychopathology 2 .…”

Genetic and environmental relations of executive functions to antisocial personality disorder symptoms and psychopathy

“…Specifically, we found that, as predicted, ASPDsx and LSRP Secondary psychopathy were negatively associated with Common EF ability. These results add to findings of prior studies using this same sample that linked Common EF to aspects of both externalizing (Friedman et al, 2007;Gustavson et al, 2017;Young et al, 2009) and internalizing psychopathology (Friedman et al, 2018;Hatoum et al, 2018) across development. Meta-analytic studies and reviews (Snyder, 2013;Snyder, Miyake, & Hankin, 2015) also suggest relations of Common EF with multiple kinds of psychopathology.…”

“…Practically speaking, a similar interpretation can be achieved with a hierarchical model in which the Updating-specific and Shifting-specific factors are modeled as residuals of a Common EF factor. However, the idea that EF tasks tap multiple EF processes, some of which are needed for all tasks and some of which are unique to particular tasks, is more consistent with a common factor and orthogonal specific factors directly predicting the EF tasks than with a hierarchical model in which Common EF predicts subfactors that in turn predict the tasks (Friedman, du Pont, Corley, & Hewitt, 2018). Moreover, the bifactor parameterization allows direct estimates of how individual differences in other traits relate to the common and specific EF variance components.…”

“…Although the age-23 EF data have been examined in several prior studies (Friedman et al, 2016;Friedman et al, 2018;Gustavson, Miyake, Hewitt, & Friedman, 2015;Gustavson et al, 2017), they have not been examined in conjunction with antisocial behavior. The specific questions we address are as follows:…”

Whole-Cortex Mapping of Common Genetic Influences on Depression and Social Deficits

“…On the day of the scan, participants completed the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CESD) scale, a 20-item Likert scale assessing the frequency of past-week depression symptoms (27). We chose this measure because (1) tendencies toward an emotional vulnerability should manifest itself in higher frequency of depression, (2) we wanted to include subsyndromal levels of depression, and (3) this measure has shown reasonable stability across 10 years of longitudinal data (28).…”