Emotional working memory in patients with major depressive disorder

OBJECTIVE: This study was performed to examine the working memory (WM) encoding and retrieval abilities in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and determine whether a mood-congruent memory effect is present. METHODS: The modified Sternberg WM paradigm with positive, negative, and neutral emotional pictures was used to investigate the WM abilities of 26 patients with MDD and 26 healthy controls (HCs). RESULTS: No significant difference in picture WM was found between the MDD and HC groups; however, the accuracy of picture position WM was significantly lower and the response time was significantly longer in the MDD than HC group, regardless of the picture or position WM. Additionally, in the MDD group, the accuracy of negative picture/position WM was significantly higher than that of positive picture/position WM. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that in patients with MDD, spatial WM impairment was more severe than object WM. In addition, these patients’ WM retrieval was impaired, resulting in a decrease in WM retrieval ability, which may be an important cause of the slow thought in patients with MDD. Moreover, patients with depression have a mood-congruent memory effect, which may be an important factor in the occurrence and maintenance of depression.