Working memory training can improve anhedonia in college students with subsyndromal depressive symptoms

Abstract

Anhedonia is defined as deficits in experiencing everyday life pleasure. Empirical studies suggest that anhedonia and working memory (WM) share overlapping neural substrates. Although WM training has been shown to alleviate anhedonia in individuals with social anhedonia, it is not clear whether WM training may also improve anhedonia in individuals with subsyndromal depression. This study examined the potential effect of WM training on improving anhedonia in college students with subsyndromal depression. Fifty college students were recruited and classified as the depressive (19 students) and non‐depressive (31 students) groups according to their scores on the Beck Depression Inventory. They then took part in a 20‐session dual n‐back WM training. All participants were requested to complete a set of measures capturing experiential pleasure and WM capacity both before and after the training. We found significant improvement in WM performance and self‐reported measures of experiential pleasure in both groups. However, only the depressive group showed significant improvement in a computer‐based task capturing motivation. These preliminary findings suggest that WM training may be able to alleviate anhedonia in individuals with subsyndromal depressive symptoms.

Behavioural and neurophysiological differences in working memory function of depressed patients and healthy controls

“…However, increasing working memory load also risks affecting the reliability of performance measures as participants increasingly lose the ability and motivation to complete the task successfully, as corroborated by Owen et al (2005). An adaptive n-back paradigm, in which task difficulty adjusts in response to participant performance, might be a better means of avoiding both floor and ceiling effects (Zhang et al, 2019). A further limitation relates to n-back task modality, as differences in modality may partly explain disagreements between our non-significant behavioural findings and the significant findings reported in previous studies.…”

Effects of working memory training on emotion regulation: Transdiagnostic review

“…Of the studies reviewed, some achieved positive gains in accuracy for cognitive outcomes (Hoorelbeke & Koster, ; Houben, Dassen, & Jansen, ; Peckham & Johnson, ; Schweizer et al, ; Xiu, Wu, Chang, & Zhou, ; Zhang et al, ), while others did not (Hitchcock & Westwell, ; Hoorelbeke et al, ; Li, Xiao, et al, ). Others demonstrated decreases in response times (Course‐Choi, Saville, & Derakshan, ; Xiu, Zhou, & Jiang, ).…”

“…Working memory training was associated with improvements in reappraisal (Peckham & Johnson, ), positive emotion regulation (Schweizer et al, ), and positive thoughts when challenged (Hoorelbeke et al, ). There were also decreases in brooding (Hoorelbeke et al, ; Hoorelbeke & Koster, ; Peckham & Johnson, ), post‐traumatic stress disorder symptoms (Schweizer et al, ), depressive symptoms (Hoorelbeke & Koster, ; Zhang et al, ), maladaptive emotion regulation (Hoorelbeke & Koster, ), rumination (Hoorelbeke et al, ), intrusive thoughts (Hotton et al, ), and worry (Course‐Choi et al, ). Following working memory training, those with social anhedonia displayed increased preferences for reward (Li, Li et al, ), which could be viewed as diminishing one problematic aspect of social anhedonia.…”

A Transdiagnostic Perspective on Social Anhedonia

“…These psychological characteristics could compromise cognitive capacities, reducing the cognitive resources available to engage in social situations actively. In a working memory training program for those with psychometrically defined depression, although ratings of depression decreased and hedonic experiences increased, social anhedonia remained the same pre- and posttraining (79). This study suggests, that while improvements can be gained in the anticipation of future events through cognitive remediation, it might be more difficult to change patterns of behavioral responses in general.…”