Attentional control in depression: A translational affective neuroscience approach

Translational research refers to the application of basic science to address clinical problems and acquire knowledge that can be used to guide and refine clinical practice. This special issue of Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience seeks to explore and integrate some of the most promising findings offered by recent cognitive and affective neuroscience studies in hopes of filling the gap between basic and applied research, thereby heightening our understanding of vulnerability for depression. The studies presented in this special issue focus specifically on attentional processes. We solicited contributions from leading researchers involved in basic cognitive and neuroscience research investigating processes underlying depression-related disturbances in emotion processing. In this introductory article, we present an integrative overview to demonstrate how these specific contributions might be valuable for translational research.     

Understanding vulnerability for depression from a cognitive neuroscience perspective: A reappraisal of attentional factors and a new conceptual framework

We propose a framework to understand increases in vulnerability for depression after recurrent episodes that links attention processes and schema activation to negative mood states, by integrating cognitive and neurobiological findings. Depression is characterized by a mood-congruent attentional bias at later stages of information processing. The basic idea of our framework is that decreased activity in prefrontal areas, mediated by the serotonin metabolism which the HPA axis controls, is associated with an impaired attenuation of subcortical regions, resulting in prolonged activation of the amygdala in response to stressors in the environment. Reduced prefrontal control in interaction with depressogenic schemas leads to impaired ability to exert attentional inhibitory control over negative elaborative processes such as rumination, leading in turn to sustained negative affect. These elaborative processes are triggered by the activation of negative schemas after confrontation with stressors. In our framework, attentional impairments are postulated as a crucial process in explaining the increasing vulnerability after depressive episodes, linking cognitive and biological vulnerability factors. We review the empirical data on the biological factors associated with the attentional impairments and detail how they are associated with rumination and mood regulation. The aim of our framework is to stimulate translational research.     

Emotional facial expressions and the attentional blink: Attenuated blink for angry and happy faces irrespective of social anxiety

Although facial information is distributed over spatial as well as temporal domains, thus far research on selective attention to disapproving faces has concentrated predominantly on the spatial domain. This study examined the temporal characteristics of visual attention towards facial expressions by presenting a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) paradigm to high (n=33) and low (n=34) socially anxious women. Neutral letter stimuli (p, q, d, b) were presented as the first target (T1), and emotional faces (neutral, happy, angry) as the second target (T2). Irrespective of social anxiety, the attentional blink was attenuated for emotional faces. Emotional faces as T2 did not influence identification accuracy of a preceding (neutral) target. The relatively low threshold for the (explicit) identification of emotional expressions is consistent with the view that emotional facial expressions are processed relatively efficiently.     

Depressive symptoms and cognitive control in a mixed antisaccade task: Specific effects of depressive rumination

Growing empirical evidence suggests that cognitive and affective problems in depression may be a reflection of cognitive control impairments. However, to date, the nature of such impairments is still poorly understood and further investigation of this topic is required to advance current knowledge on the underlying vulnerability factors for depression. Using a mixed antisaccade paradigm, the present study examined if depressive symptoms in general, and more specifically rumination, are related to impairments in cognitive control functions such as inhibition and switching. The results on antisaccade latency and error rates indicated that depressive symptoms in general were not related to impairments in inhibition and switching. However, rumination was associated with impaired inhibition such that high, compared to low, ruminators had slower antisaccade latencies. No group differences were observed on antisaccade error rates. Implications for understanding the underlying vulnerability factors for the development of depressive symptoms are discussed.     

Nonwork orientations relative to career: A multidimensional measure

Although scholars typically assess an individual's nonwork role orientation relative to career as a unitary construct, we argue that a person's orientation toward nonwork roles is multi-dimensional. Drawing on a literature review demonstrating the need for improved constructs capturing changing relationships between career and multi-faceted nonwork orientations, and empirical data from three studies with samples at different career stages (early and mid-career), we use factor analysis and data from qualitative and longitudinal studies to develop three unique scales to assess a person's nonwork priorities relative to career orientations: family, personal life, and community service. There were generally positive relationships between the protean career scales and the new nonwork role orientation measures. Future research should move beyond a binary work–life or work–family models and include multi-dimensional measures of nonwork orientations relative to career.     

Functional cerebral changes in multiple sclerosis patients during an autobiographical memory test

Our aim was to investigate the functional underpinnings of autobiographical memory (AM) impairment in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. To that end, 18 patients and 18 controls underwent the autobiographical interview (AI). Subsequently, the 36 participants underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session designed to assess the construction and elaboration of AMs. A categorical control task was also presented. Patients were trained in the fMRI procedure to optimise the procedural aspects accompanying the task itself. Although the patients obtained significantly poorer AI scores (p < .001), their performance on the easier AM fMRI task was efficiently carried out, allowing relevant comparisons with healthy controls. Relatively to healthy controls, the patients showed increased and bilateral cerebral activations (p < .005) during the construction and elaboration phases. The prefrontal, temporal and posterior cerebral region activations were located within the core network sustaining AM, with the bilateral prefrontal region being centrally involved. The parametric neural responses to the difficulty of access and amount of details of memories were also significantly different for the two groups, with the right hippocampal region showing a particularly increased recruitment (p < .005). The findings suggested the presence of functional cerebral changes during AM performance and supported the presence of AM retrieval deficit in MS patients.     

The Significance of Ferenczi's clinical contributions for working with psychotic patients

This paper tries to show that Ferenczi's contributions in “The Development of Psychoanalysis” (with Otto Rank) and in his “Clinical Diary” are pivotal for the development of modern psychotherapy with severely disturbed patients. In addition, the question of whether a psychotherapeutic technique should or could be communicated to others is discussed.     

Associations between type of treatment and illness-specific locus of control in type 1 diabetes patients

Abstract

This study examined differences in diabetes-specific locus of control beliefs of 82 insulin-treated Type I diabetes patients undergoing either conventional therapy (CT), intensified conventional therapy (ICT) or continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII). Compared to CT with its adherence to a strict regimen, ICT and CSII allow a much greater flexibility in timing of meals and daily activities. On the other hand, such flexibility requires a much more active role of the patient. The hypotheses of higher internality and lower powerful others locus of control beliefs in ICT and CSII patients than in CT patients could be supported for powerful others locus of control only. A one-year follow-up replicated this finding. Furthermore, high powerful others locus of control was associated with low diabetes-related knowledge and poor glycaemic control. The relevance of the patients' experience with the respective treatment is examined in view of the results and implications for studies on the feasibility of diabetes regimens are discussed.     

Mood-congruent attention and memory bias in dysphoria: Exploring the coherence among information-processing biases

Recent studies indicate that depression is characterized by mood-congruent attention bias at later stages of information-processing. Moreover, depression has been associated with enhanced recall of negative information. The present study tested the coherence between attention and memory bias in dysphoria. Stable dysphoric (n = 41) and non-dysphoric (n = 41) undergraduates first performed a spatial cueing task that included negative, positive, and neutral words. Words were presented for 250 ms under conditions that allowed or prevented elaborate processing. Memory for the words presented in the cueing task was tested using incidental free recall. Dysphoric individuals exhibited an attention bias for negative words in the condition that allowed elaborate processing, with the attention bias for negative words predicting free recall of negative words. Results demonstrate the coherence of attention and memory bias in dysphoric individuals and provide suggestions on the influence of attention bias on further processing of negative material.     

Ceci n'est pas la mort: Evidence for the recruitment of self‐reference from surrealistic art under mortality salience

Previous research has demonstrated that death reminders influence how we perceive art. In the context of terror management theory, this has been explained by the death‐transcending quality of art to convey cultural meaning. In two studies, we examined psychological and neurocognitive responses to naturalistic and surrealistic art when death was primed. We found that naturalistic paintings were evaluated similarly in terms of personal reassurance in both mortality salience and control condition, whereas surrealistic paintings were evaluated as more reassuring in the mortality salience condition than in the control condition. Using high‐field functional magnetic resonance imaging in a second study, we found a similar pattern of results, showing specific activation in the precuneus, a brain area associated with self‐related operations, in all prime conditions for the viewing of naturalistic paintings, but only in the death and disgust prime conditions when viewing surrealistic paintings. Our results suggest motivated self‐reference when viewing both naturalistic and surrealistic artworks under mortality salience. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.