Is negative self-referent bias an endophenotype for depression? An fMRI study of emotional self-referent words in twins at high vs. low risk of depression

Abstract

The subtle display of negative recall bias is consistent with the hypothesis that self-referent negative memory bias is an endophenotype for depression. High-risk twins' lower categorisation accuracy adds to the evidence for valence-independent cognitive deficits in individuals at familial risk for depression.

Is aberrant affective cognition an endophenotype for affective disorders? – A monozygotic twin study

“…The absence of negative bias in the recall of self-referential words in high-risk twins is in line with previous findings in individuals at risk of UD (Le Masurier et al , 2007; Mannie et al , 2007) and only subtle negative memory bias in twins at high-risk of UD (Miskowiak et al , 2018). However, while we found no deficits in the categorization of emotional words, previous UD high-risk studies reported slower response times in general (Mannie et al , 2007), poorer accuracy (Miskowiak et al , 2018) and faster categorization of negative words (Le Masurier et al , 2007). Discrepancies may be due to small sample size and investigation of individuals at-risk of UD only.…”

Self-related primes reduce congruency effects in the Stroop task.

“…How this boost in control is implemented on the process level is an important question for future research. For instance, research on affective disorders like depression or personality disorders found specific impairments in both the processing of self-relevant information and in cognitive control (Davis, 1979; Miskowiak et al, 2018). The present research links both constructs in the search for a better understanding of the (mal)functioning of “self-control.”…”

“…However, attention is not only biased toward self-relevant information, but self-relevant information might also tune attention more broadly, for instance, by engaging cognitive control processes that regulate allocation of attention. Indeed, research in social, clinical, and developmental sciences predicts a close link between a cognitive representation of the self and cognitive control processes (e.g., Bandura, 1997; Baumeister et al, 1994; Miskowiak et al, 2018). The present research is concerned with this signaling function of the self to prime cognitive control that allows for goal-directed actions.…”

Depressive rumination is correlated with brain responses during self-related processing

“…23 This means that people with depression tend to focus more on negative self-related stimuli and interpret stimuli more negatively in relation to themselves. [24][25][26] With this potential interaction between the self-related stimuli used and an inherent negative bias, it becomes challenging to parse the contribution to brain activity measures of self-related processing in itself from the influence of altered emotional processing.…”