El debate emoción y cognición en neurociencias. Avances en la comprensión de los dominios sintomáticos de la depresión unipolar

Abstract

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by dysregulated biological, cognitive and behavioural responses during emotional processing. Cognitive theories of vulnerability to MDD postulate that individuals at high risk are characterized by negative cognitive biases, including negative self-assessments and attentional bias toward positive stimuli. More than 3 decades of research on cognitive factors in depression have provided impressive support for cognitive formulations of depression. Early studies mainly showed that depressed and non-depressed people differ in the content of their thoughts and in how they manage them. Recent research, however, has begun to explore the nature of cognitive deficits and biases in the information processing that characterize depression. While initial studies used a variety of self-report measures, studies on cognitive biases are used in a wide variety of experimental tasks. These studies have provided general support for the view that depression is characterized by automatic negative thoughts and biases in attention, interpretation and memory.