Implicit and explicit procedural learning in patients recently remitted from severe major depression

Pedersen, Anya, Kuppers, Kerstin, Behnken, Andreas, Kroker, Kristin, Schoning, Sonja, Baune, Bernhard T., Rist, Fred, Arolt, Volker, and Suslow, Thomas (2009) Implicit and explicit procedural learning in patients recently remitted from severe major depression. Psychiatry Research, 169 (1). pp. 1-6.

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Abstract

In acute depression a high prevalence of deficits in learning and memory performance has been reported. Still, it is unclear whether these cognitive deficits are present after remission of clinical symptoms of depression. The present study compared 20 inpatients recently remitted from severe major depressive disorder (MDD) with 20 healthy matched control participants on two sequence learning tasks: a modified serial reaction-time task (SRT) for implicit learning, which is sensitive to subcortical and frontal impairments, and a serial generation task (SGT) for explicit learning. As compared with performance in healthy controls, implicit and explicit learning were not impaired in recently remitted inpatients with depression. Intentional acquisition of new information was related to the severity of depressive symptoms as patients with higher scores on Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI) showed poorer explicit learning. In contrast to findings in acute depression, our results suggest a normal degree of learning in remitted depression; these findings are consistent with unimpaired fronto-striatal functioning. However, although not statistically significant, patients remitted from melancholic MDD revealed poorer implicit learning performance compared with patients remitted from non--melancholic MDD. Longitudinal studies in patients with melancholic vs. non-melancholic MDD are needed to investigate the course of cognitive functioning during the recovery from MDD.

Item ID: 5116
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1872-7123
Keywords: remission; melancholia; sequence learning; serial reaction-time task
Date Deposited: 25 Aug 2009 05:25
FoR Codes: 11 MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES > 1109 Neurosciences > 110999 Neurosciences not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes: 92 HEALTH > 9299 Other Health > 929999 Health not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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