Depressive symptoms and cognitive control in a mixed antisaccade task: Specific effects of depressive rumination

Abstract

Growing empirical evidence suggests that cognitive and affective problems in depression may be a reflection of cognitive control impairments. However, to date, the nature of such impairments is still poorly understood and further investigation of this topic is required to advance current knowledge on the underlying vulnerability factors for depression. Using a mixed antisaccade paradigm, the present study examined if depressive symptoms in general, and more specifically rumination, are related to impairments in cognitive control functions such as inhibition and switching. The results on antisaccade latency and error rates indicated that depressive symptoms in general were not related to impairments in inhibition and switching. However, rumination was associated with impaired inhibition such that high, compared to low, ruminators had slower antisaccade latencies. No group differences were observed on antisaccade error rates. Implications for understanding the underlying vulnerability factors for the development of depressive symptoms are discussed.

State Rumination: Associations with Emotional Stress Reactivity and Attention Biases

“…Past research has reported similar across-valence effects in the association between cognitive processes and rumination – albeit trait rumination – within a dysphoric sample (e.g., De Lissnyder et al, 2012). Moreover, other studies have shown that trait rumination is linked with difficulty inhibiting neutral or non-emotional material (e.g., De Lissnyder, Derakshan, De Raedt, & Koster, 2011). It is therefore possible that the association between rumination and cognitive control deficits may not be specific to negative material but instead may be found across the board.…”

Inhibition of negative content—a shared process in rumination and reappraisal

“…In the anti-saccade task, participants are requested to inhibit their reflexive tendency to orient their attention toward an abrupt cue. Similar to the NAP task, when the cue is emotional, the task can serve to measure inhibition of emotional content (e.g., De Lissnyder et al, 2011). …”

“…The opposite pattern has emerged for rumination. Several studies using the NAP and the anti-saccade tasks have shown that ruminators have difficulty inhibiting emotional content (e.g., De Lissnyder et al, 2011), even when controlling for levels of depressive symptoms (Joormann, 2006; Zetsche and Joormann, 2011; but for discrepant findings see Goeleven et al, 2006). In line with these behavioral findings, investigators have identified rumination-related patterns of brain activation, such as a higher functional connectivity between the left striatum and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), a region that has been associated with inhibition (Kühn et al, 2013).…”

Saccadic Eye Movements in Depressed Elderly Patients

“…The study of Mahlberg et al [14] showed that patients with depression had longer reaction times (RT) than controls in prosaccade tasks, suggesting that a psychomotor retardation affecting reflexive eye movement could characterize some depressive symptoms. The study conducted by De Lissnyder et al [15] reported that dysphoric subjects had longer RT than controls in the antisaccade task. Globally, these results highlight the need to distinguish between basic reflexive components evaluated by prosaccade tasks and more elaborated executive processes involved in the inhibition required by the antisaccade task.…”