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25 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is the amygdala responsible for? (3) |
1. Threat detection 2. Directing attention to emotionally salient/ambiguous stimuli to engage further processing 3. Emotional learning
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What differences are there in amygdala activation between depressed and healthy people at rest? |
Hyper-activation even in resting state in depressed people correlated with symptom severity |
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What pattern of activation is seen during function in the amygdala of control and depressed patients? What experimental design is usually used to detect this? |
Hyper-activation of the left amygdala is seen in 'masked facial expression' experimental designs.
1. Face displaying emotion shown for 40ms 2. Face displaying neutral expression shown for 160ms, masking the first
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What structural differences are there in the brain that implicate memory impairment in depression? What restrictions are there on this finding? |
Davidson et al., 2002 Reduced volume of the hippocampus Only if the patient has been depressed for >2 years |
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By what mechanisms might depression be linked to reduced hippocampal volume? |
1. neuronal loss through chronic hypercortisolaemia 2. impaired neurogenesis |
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What functional abnormality might lead to the poor control of emotional responses often seen in depression |
PFC abnormal activation patterns L:R asymmetry in alpha frequency band Left: approach/appetitive Right: withdrawal/inhibition
Depression might come from too much right and not enough left activation |
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What differences can be seen in the function of the DLPFC in depressed patients? |
At rest: reduced activation
Non-emotional WM tasks: increased activation compared to controls to attain the same performance level
Emotional processing tasks: reduced activation which could be linked to the increased activation of the amygdala - less inhibitory control |
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What differences can be seen in the function of the VLPFC and the orbital PFC in depressed patients? |
These areas are responsible for representing reward and punishment and using this to guide behaviour Orbital PFC deals with subjective hedonistic processing
Increased OPFC activity during tasks that involve reward/punishment processing Increased VLPFC activity at rest indicates high-level processing |
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What differences can be seen in the function of the anterior cingulate cortex in depressed patients? |
Reduced volume of the subgenual ACC fray matter in MDD and BPD Activation at rest is also significantly increased, even when volume differences are accounted for - severity of depression correlates positively with sgACC activity.
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When is deep brain stimulation used in the treatment of depression? |
When patients are suffering with severe and treatment resistant depression
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How is deep brain stimulation used? Give an experimental example. |
Mayberg et al., 2005 Electrodes are placed in the sgACC and the region is stimulated. After 1 month: 2/6 responded After 2 months: 5/6 responded After 3 months: 3/6 were in near remission |
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What are the response and remission rates for DBS vs anti-depressant medication for treatment-resistant depression? |
DBS: 40% response, 26% remission ADM: 12% response, 4% remission |
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Give four possible mechanisms underlying DBS that produce the observed results. |
1. silences stimulated neurons 2. modulates network activity at distal sites 3. induces long-term synaptic change 4. sensitises brain to effects of other treatments |
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Describe the cognitive theory of depression presented by Beck |
Early experiences, genetic factors & personality > negative schemas (dysfunctional beliefs) > belief-relevant stressors > depression |
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What is an information processing bias? |
Tendency for the information processing system to consistently favour stimulus material of a particular type or content |
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Give three potential sources of information processing bias |
1. motivational state 2. expertise/interest 3. emotion |
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What explicit memory effects can be seen in depressed vs anxious vs controls |
Bradley, Mogg and Williams, 1995 Depressed people were significantly better at remembering depression-related words than positive or anxiety related words and than control/anxiety patients. |
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What implicit memory effects can be seen in depressed vs anxious vs control patients? |
Bradley, Mogg and Williams, 1995 1. encoding: rate how often you use a list of words including, for example, grief and green
2. test: complete the word stem GR___ or sort a list of words into words and non-words
3. results: controls were better than both depressed and anxious patients in the neutral word trials Depressed patients were better in depression-related word trials |
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What distinct style of response is characteristic of depressed people when they are asked to recall a specific example of, say, a celebration |
They give over general responses which may not hold the positive emotional force that specific memories recalled by controls would have.
Correlates with or predicts: 1. rumination 2. cognitive deficits 3. longer depressive episodes 4. poor problems solving
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What functional stylistic habits might be causing avoidance of specific memory retrieval? |
1. specific retrieval style predicts stronger negative moods following a frustrating task 2. specific memories could be too painful so people train themselves to remember general ideas instead |
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What is the 'executive dysfunction' explanation of poor specificity of autobiographical memory recall? |
Impaired ability to hold task instructions in mind might be having an effect. Indeed introducing a difficult secondary task can impair specificity.
WM deficit could be a way of avoiding negative moods that are evoked by specific memories |
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What four types of experimental design are use to highlight interpretation biases in depressed patients? |
1. ambiguous homophones 2. word unscrambling tasks with positive and negative sentence options 3. emotion-based story interpretation 4. ambiguous facial expression interpretation |
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Give 5 examples of characteristic automatic negative thinking in depressed patients |
1. all-or-nothing thinking 2. catastrophising 3. discounting the positives 4. jumping to conclusions 5. mind-reading |
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What does CBT for depression aim to do and how does it go about doing it? |
Modifies thoughts, evaluations, attributions, beliefs and processing biases 1. identify maladaptive thinking 2. evaluate accuracy 3. generate alternatives 4. test out effectiveness of alternatives |
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How does mindfulness-based cognitive therapy work? |
1. notice negative thoughts and reactions 2. accept and allow them and realise that thoughts are just thoughts 3. shift from analytical to experiential focus 4. meditation to train attention on the present moment |
