Affective Disorders 10

Front 1

What % of depressed elderly will feature
cognitive deficits?

Back 1

10-20%.

Front 2

How does depression affect cognition:

What is the cognitive interference hypothesis?

Back 2

the cognitive interference hypothesis according to which depressive thoughts and worries interfere and disrupt performance

Front 3

How does depression affect cognition:

What is the reduced motivation hypothesis?

Back 3

the reduced motivation hypothesis which suggests that depressed people are insufficiently motivated to perform normally.

Front 4

How does depression affect cognition:

What is the learned helplessness hypothesis?

Back 4

the learned helplessness hypothesis, which states that depressed people expect that their responses will make no difference and so they give up trying

Front 5

What is the alternate view to the above hypotheses?

Back 5

Alternate view is that the physical effects per se disrupt cognition (e.g. neuranatomical/transmitter)

Front 6

Is the cognitive interference hypothesis likely?

Back 6

Cognitive interference hypothesis is unlikely as generally working memory is spared and should be
most susceptible.

Front 7

Is the reduced motivation/learned helplessness hypothesis likely?

Back 7

Reduced motivation/learned helplessness:
probable; (e.g. Rohling et al, 2002) ; but why
do only some feature the cognitive deficits?

Front 8

Heritability of depression?

Back 8

~37%

- This is much lower than the heritability of SZ (~75%)
- Partly due to heritable depressive personality traits (neuroticism)

Front 9

Is MDD a single gene disease?

Back 9

No.

Some chromosomal loci of linkage have been replicated, But none has been replicated in every family study.

Front 10

Possible Contributions of Neural Circuits to depression:

Orbitofrontal cortex? (3)

Back 10

Depressed patients respond faster to sad words, more to negative feedback, and have smaller volumes