NEURAL CORRELATES OF COGNITIVE CONTROL IN MAJOR DEPRESSION

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Background: Depressed individuals frequently experience recurrent and uncontrollable negative thoughts. This ruminative thinking is postulated to play an important role in the onset and maintenance of depressive episodes. Recent work suggests that rumination in depression might be due in part to difficulties in removing irrelevant negative material from working memory. Objective: This study was designed to examine the neural correlates of this difficulty in cognitive control. Hypothesis: Given that the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) plays an integral role in the maintenance of verbal information, we hypothesized that depressed individuals, relative to nondepressed controls, would exhibit increased IFG activation during attempted elimination of negative information from working memory. Methods: Participants completed a modified Sternberg task while being scanned. Data was acquired on a 3T GE scanner using a spiral in/spiral out acquisition sequence (Glover, 2001). Resulting data was processed using AFNI and included manual realignment, normalization and smoothing.