Neuropsychological Functioning in Depressed Versus Nondepressed Participants with Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract

Differences in cognitive functioning between participants with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) reporting depressive symptomatology (AD-Dep; n = 37) and a control group of nondepressed participants with AD (AD-Con; n = 98) were investigated based on hypothesized impairments of attention/concentration, psychomotor speed, and simple motor speed. Groups did not differ in age, education, overall severity of dementia, auditory comprehension, or use of psychotropic medications. AD-Dep participants performed significantly more poorly than AD-Con participants on 3 of the 13 measures on which they were hypothesized to exhibit greater impairment (WAIS-R Block Design, WAIS-R Digit Symbol, and speeded motor programming); and there were trends toward poorer performance on four additional measures (WAIS-R Object Assembly, WAIS-R Picture Arrangement, WAIS-R Digit Span-backward, and letter fluency). There was only one significant effect for the 13 measures on which no group differences were hypothesized; the AD-Dep participants unexpectedly obtained better WMS-R Logical Memory delayed recall scores than the AD-Con participants. Finally, AD-Dep participants exhibited an unexpected pattern of greater right hand advantage on the Finger Tapping Test.

Differential Diagnosis of Depression and Alzheimer's Disease Using the Cattell-Horn-Carroll Theory

“…As previously noted, although past studies have often attempted to use standardized procedures in diagnosing AD and depression in the elderly, little success has been reported in obtaining a clinical profile of cognitive abilities for both populations (Breen et al, 1984;Lopez et al, 1990;Wefel, Hoyt, & Massman, 1999). Our findings suggest that success in this area may be achieved when using theory-based tools, with the WJ-III COG representing a concise and accurate diagnostic tool.…”

Depressive symptom quality and neuropsychological performance in dementia

“…As subgroups were rather small, false negative results cannot be excluded in this study. In another study, AD patients with depression performed more poorly on Block design, Digit Symbol and speeded motor programming, but performed better on a test of logical memory than non-depressed AD-patients (Wefel et al, 1999).…”

Factor Structure of the Geriatric Depression Scale and Relationships with Cognition and Function in Alzheimer’s Disease

“…In addition to the issues inherent in diagnosing depression in AD, methodological flaws and inconsistencies underlie the contradictory findings and have fueled the debate surrounding this topic. The literature provides evidence for the negative impact of depression on domains including general cognition [19], full scale IQ [20], measures of dementia severity, working memory, processing speed [21], attention, motor functioning [22], and visuospatial perception and construction [12,22]. Other investigators have found no cognitive differences between AD patients with and without depressive symptoms [23,24].…”