The Effects of RTMS on Psychomotor Retardation in Elderly Depression

Abstract

Depression-related psychomotor retardation (PMR) is often misinterpreted as the age-related slowing, playing down the importance of depression in aging population. Thus we tested the PMR-related cognitive flexibility by assessing the verbal fluency performance in healthy older controls (n = 18; mean age: 61.7 ± 9.23 years) and in age-matched patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) (n = 29; mean age: 57.1 ± 12.4 years). We also examined the antidepressant effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in eligible MDD patients (n = 17), evidenced by an expected verbal fluency improvement. Three scores were assessed for semantic and phonemic fluency tests: (1) total number of words generated excluding preservative and intrusive errors; (2) number of switches; and (3) mean cluster size. The results clearly showed that PMR in geriatric depression differed from the age related slowing. Significant differences between groups in cluster size (p < 0.05) and percent of preservative errors (p < 0.04) were found for the phonemic fluency performance. In addition to significant improvement of the depression level (p < 0.001) and the PMR score (p < 0.001) after the rTMS treatment, the results showed a nonsignificant trend toward an increasing verbal fluency performance. Overall, the present study confirms the negative influence of depression on verbal episodic memory performance, regardless of age. But the depression-related deficits in cognitive flexibility seem not to be associated with the PMR scores before and after the rTMS treatment, challenging the possible validation of verbal fluency performance as one of relevant hallmark of PMR. THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND DEPRESSION IN OLDER ADULTS WITH PARKINSON'S DISEASE, 1. University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, 2. San Francisco VA Medical Center, San Francisco, California It is important to understand the associations between physical activity (PA) and mood in the early stages of Parkinson's disease (PD) progression. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between PA and depression in newly diagnosed, untreated individuals with PD. We analyzed data from the Parkinson Progression Markers Initiative and examined depression (Geriatric Depression Scale; GDS) in 260 de novo individuals with PD. Participants with a GDS score ≤5 were considered "not depressed" and those with a GDS score >5 were considered "depressed." We also examined scores on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and self-reported levels of PA (Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly). Physical activity including light, moderate and strenuous PA, were tallied to create summary scores for frequency (days/week) and duration (hours/day). Thirty-four percent of study participants reported being depressed at baseline. Those who were depressed had fewer years of education (15 vs. 16 years, p=0.02) but did not differ significantly by age, sex or cognitive function compared to those with no depression. Study participants engaged in PA for ...