Cognitive Control, Cognitive Biases and Emotion Regulation in Depression: A New Proposal for an Integrative Interplay Model

Abstract

Research traditions on cognition and depression focus on relatively unconnected aspects of cognitive functioning. On one hand, the neuropsychological perspective has concentrated on cognitive control difficulties as a prominent feature of this condition. On the other hand, the clinical psychology perspective has focused on cognitive biases and repetitive negative patterns of thinking (i.e., rumination) for emotional information. A review of the literature from both fields reveals that difficulties are more evident for mood-congruent materials, suggesting that cognitive control difficulties interact with cognitive biases to hinder cognitive switching, working memory updating, and inhibition of irrelevant information. Connecting research from these two traditions, we propose a novel integrative cognitive model of depression in which the interplay between mood-congruent cognitive control difficulties, cognitive biases, and rumination may ultimately lead to ineffective emotion-regulation strategies to downregulate negative mood and upregulate positive mood.

The Relation between Neuroticism and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Behavior among College Students: Multiple Mediating Effects of Emotion Regulation and Depression

“…High neuroticism and self-awareness means emotional instability and poor emotional regulation, which is related to a high level of depression and anxiety. According to the novel integrative cognitive model of depression put forward by Villalobos et al [ 33 ], when individuals pay attention to, remember, and explain external stimuli, they tend to process external information negatively due to negative processing bias. Highly neurotic individuals often have low ER ability and are not good at seeking help from the outside world, so they are prone to increased depression.…”

Dysfunction of Emotion Regulation in Mild Cognitive Impairment Individuals Combined With Depressive Disorder: A Neural Mechanism Study

“…(3) Lead to negative biases in long-term memory. In addition, studies have shown that these cognitive processes exacerbate and sustain the typical negative emotions of depressive episodes (Villalobos et al, 2021).…”

Improving Mood and Cognitive Symptoms in Huntington's Disease With Cariprazine Treatment

“…Altered DA signaling contributes not only to different component processes of reward, mainly mediating anticipatory phases, reinforcement processes and hedonic response ( 51 , 52 ) but to cognitive manifestations of HD as well. The dysfunction of cognitive processing of emotion, similar to apathy, has been described in several CNS disorders such as depression ( 53 ), post-traumatic stress disorder ( 54 ) and progressive supranuclear palsy ( 55 ). In another dopamine associated disease, Parkinson's disease (PD) the cognitive deterioration was observed commonly in association with apathy ( 56 , 57 ): apathetic PD patients had a significant decline in memory compared with non-apathetic patients ( 58 ).…”