Decreased cognitive control in response to negative information in patients with remitted depression: an event-related potential study

Abstract

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with difficulty disengaging attention from emotionally negative information. Few studies have investigated whether euthymic individuals with a history of depression (remitted MDD [rMDD]) show similar deficits, and little is known about concomitant neurophysiological features of such deficits. To fill these gaps, we investigated cognitive control over emotional stimuli in participants with rMDD and controls without history of depression or psychopathology. We collected 128- channel event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants performed a cued emotional conflict task. During the task, a cue instructed the participant to respond to the actual or opposite valence of an upcoming happy or sad face. We enrolled 15 individuals with rMDD and 18 controls in our study. Event-related potentials showed no group differences in response to the cues, highlighting preserved preparatory processes when anticipating an emotional conflict. However, relative to the control group, the rMDD group responded more slowly and showed reduced N450 amplitudes on trials that required disengaging from negative faces (pressing "happy" in response to a sad face). The sample size was small, and the null finding in the cue-locked N2 analyses may be owing to low power. Our results suggest a selective deficit in cognitive control over sad stimuli in individuals with rMDD. Additional studies will be required to pinpoint whether the current findings stem from impairments in response conflict, conflict monitoring and/or attentional disengagement in response to sad stimuli. Moreover, future studies are warranted to evaluate whether decreased cognitive control in response to negative information might increase the risk for future depressive episodes.