Abstract
Verbal memory deficits attributed to late life depression (LLD) may result from executive dysfunction that is more detrimental to list-learning than story-based recall when compared to healthy aging. Despite these behavioral dissociations, little work has been done investigating related neuroanatomical dissociations across types of verbal memory performance in LLD. We compared list-learning to story-based memory performance in 24 non-demented individuals with LLD (age∼66.1±7.8) and 41 non-demented/non-depressed healthy controls (HC; age∼67.6±5.3). We correlated significant results of between-group analyses across memory performance variables with brain volumes of frontal, temporal and parietal regions known to be involved with verbal learning and memory. When compared to the HC group, the LLD group showed significantly lower verbal memory performance for spontaneous recall after repeated exposure and after a long-delay but only for the list-learning task; groups did not differ on story-based memory performance. Despite equivalent brain volumes across regions, only the LLD group showed brain associations with verbal memory performance and only for the list-learning task. Specifically, frontal volumes important for subjective organization and response monitoring correlated with list-learning performance in the LLD group. This study is the first to demonstrate neuroanatomical dissociations across types of verbal memory performance in individuals with LLD. Results provide structural evidence for the behavioral dissociations between list-learning and story-based recall in LLD when compared to healthy aging. More specifically, it points toward a network of predominantly anterior brain regions that may underlie the executive contribution to list-learning in older adults with depression.
Highlights
Late-life depression (LLD) is the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in adults over 60 years of age, affecting upwards of 16% of this aging population
Subjective reports of depressive symptomatology were higher in the late life depression (LLD) group when compared to the healthy controls (HC) group, F(1,64)=262.0, p
Partial correlational analyses controlling for education were performed between select verbal memory performance scores of Immediate Recall after repeat exposure (i.e., CVLT Trials 1–5 and Logical Memory (LM) I) as well as Delayed Recall (i.e., CVLT long delay free recall and LMII) and brain volumes for the LLD and HC groups separately
Summary
Late-life depression (LLD) is the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in adults over 60 years of age, affecting upwards of 16% of this aging population. Successful performance on LM predicts successful treatment response in LLD (Story, Potter, Attix, Welsh-Bohmer, & Steffens, 2008) whereas executive dysfunction negatively impacts treatment response and remission rates in LLD (Alexopoulos et al, 2000). Taken together this would suggest that story-based verbal recall is not contingent upon executive function or dysfunction in LLD. Executive deficits in LLD appear more detrimental to list-learning given the heavier (executive) burden placed on the individuals during list-learning tasks (e.g., the subjective organization of individually presented items heavily reliant executive processes; (Moscovitch & Winocur, 2002) when compared to story-based recall that provides contextually-based information (Rabin et al, 2009)
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