Depressed Thoughts Hinder Memory and Concentration, Study Says

Amy Taylor January 09, 2015

New research provides empirical proof that a depressive mood accompanied by depressive thoughts can impede concentration and memory.

Although it is accepted that the day-to-day burden from depression greatly affects job performance and personal relationships, the new research is the first to observe this phenomenon in a laboratory setting.

In the study, individuals with depressed mood showed as much as a 12 percent reduction in memory compared to individuals without depressed mood when depressive thoughts were present. Yet, if the depressive thoughts were not present, they performed similarly to individuals without a depressed mood.

“The results suggest that individuals with and without depressed mood generally have a similar ability to actively remember information. However, when depressive thoughts are present, people with depressed mood are unable to remove their attention from this information, leading to deficits in their memory,” said graduate student Nicholas Hubbard, the study’s lead author.

“Depression is an interference phenomenon. Rumination and negative thought-loops interfere with a person’s ability to think,” said Bart Rypma, Ph.D., associate professor in the School of Behavioural and Brain Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas.

“We hypothesize that when individuals with depressed mood are exposed to stimuli, such as a meaningful song or a place that evokes sad feelings, the brain fixates on that and can’t focus on daily tasks such as a phone conversation or completing a grocery list.

“In a traditional laboratory setting, external cues that induce depressive thoughts and therefore interfere with cognitive performance are eliminated. In our study, we found a way to incorporate them and observe their effects on memory.”

“Our findings implicate that therapeutic approaches such as teaching one to recognize and inhibit depressive thoughts could be a key aspect to treating cognitive deficits in depression.”

Using the new study paradigm, the research team plans to study individuals who meet the clinical diagnosis for depression.

The study was published in the journal Cognition and Emotion.

Source of this article: Depressed Thoughts Hinder Memory/Concentration