Education did not interact with major depression on performance of memory tests in acute southern Brazilian in patients

Abstract

The relationship of cognitive function to depression in older adults has become a topic of extensive clinical interest and research.ObjectiveTo analyze association between cognitive/memory performance,Major Depression, and education in 206 inpatients from the Psychiatry and Internal Medicine Departments.MethodsPatients were evaluated by the Mini Mental State Examination, a battery of memory tests, and the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale. Depression patients comprised 45 severe and 42 mild/moderate, according to the Montgomery-Asberg scale. The effect of psychoactive drugs was recorded (30% drug-free). Education was measured in years. Cognitive/memory tests assessed five domains: general mental functioning, attention, sustained attention/working memory, learning memory (verbal), and remote memory. An index for memory impairment was created (positivity: 50% of tests below cutoff).ResultsThe chief effect on worse performance was Major Depression for the domains (age and education adjusted) of attention, learning, remote memory, and general functioning. For the domain “sustained attention and working memory”, only severely depressed patients differed from the medical controls (p=.008). Education showed an independent effect on test performances. No interaction between depression and educational status was observed.We also observed an independent effect of psychoactive drugs on some cognitive/memory domains. Logistic Regression showed Major Depression as the main risk for cognitive impairment.ConclusionsThese data demonstrated association of Major Depression with impaired cognitive performance independent of educational attainment or psychiatric medications.

Neuropsychological Practice Effects in the Context of Cognitive Decline: Contributions from Learning and Task Novelty

“…As one of our measures of interest was a motor programming task, non-right-handedness was added as an exclusion criterion.2 Severe depression in older adults is associated with attentional problems, potentially precluding collection of valid and reliable results(Camozzato, de Almeida Fleck, Delgado, & Fagundes Chaves, 2007;Köhler et al, 2010) 3 Two participants had unusually low scores for the measure of novelty effect, a third had an unusually low score for practice effect on WAIS-IV Coding, and a fourth had an unusually low score for practice effect on WAIS-IV Symbol Search. See Supplementary Figure for pair-wise scatterplots of all primary variables.Thorgusen-neuropsychological practice effects …”

“… 2 Severe depression in older adults is associated with attentional problems, potentially precluding collection of valid and reliable results (Camozzato, de Almeida Fleck, Delgado, & Fagundes Chaves, 2007; Köhler et al, 2010) …”