Clinical depression presents with symptoms at a number of levels, including decreased cognitive and behavioral arousal (psychomotor retardation), a loss of interest in pleasurable activities (anhedonia), a blunting of emotional expressivity (depressed affect), and a distortion of memory and expectancy for personally-relevant life events (depressive cognitive bias). Research is required to explain how the depressive response impairs neuropsychological function at multiple levels of the neuraxis. In previous research, the investigator used electrophysiological and cognitive measures to show that a depressed mood preferentially impairs the right hemisphere's attentional function, providing a theoretical model that may help explain arousal, attention, memory and affective experience. In the present research, the investigator extends this work with improved behavioral paradigms, with dense sensor array measures of brain electrical activity, and with clinical recruitment and evaluation procedures that target melancholic depression. The combination of these electrophysiologic and cognitive measures may provide new insight into the mechanisms of positive arousal (depression-elation), negative arousal (calmness-anxiety), and how they modulate the memory operations of corticolimbic networks. The specific measurement of spatial memory skills will test the theoretical model that positive arousal is particularly important to the dorsal corticolimbic pathway which is integral not only to spatial memory but to the right hemisphere's role in affective communication and cognition. More generally, the integration of neurophysiological with cognitive studies may help bridge the gap between biological and psychological approaches to depression.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01MH042669-08
Application #
2883356
Study Section
Clinical Neuroscience and Biological Psychopathology Review Committee (CNBP)
Program Officer
Foote, Stephen L
Project Start
1990-04-01
Project End
2001-02-28
Budget Start
1999-03-01
Budget End
2000-02-29
Support Year
8
Fiscal Year
1999
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Oregon
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
948117312
City
Eugene
State
OR
Country
United States
Zip Code
97403
Poulsen, Catherine; Luu, Phan; Davey, Colin et al. (2005) Dynamics of task sets: evidence from dense-array event-related potentials. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 24:133-54
Luu, Phan; Tucker, Don M; Makeig, Scott (2004) Frontal midline theta and the error-related negativity: neurophysiological mechanisms of action regulation. Clin Neurophysiol 115:1821-35
Luu, Phan; Tucker, Don M; Derryberry, Douglas et al. (2003) Electrophysiological responses to errors and feedback in the process of action regulation. Psychol Sci 14:47-53
Tucker, Don M; Luu, Phan; Frishkoff, Gwen et al. (2003) Frontolimbic response to negative feedback in clinical depression. J Abnorm Psychol 112:667-78
Tucker, Don M; Luu, Phan; Desmond Jr, Richard E et al. (2003) Corticolimbic mechanisms in emotional decisions. Emotion 3:127-49
Dien, Joseph; Frishkoff, Gwen A; Cerbone, Arleen et al. (2003) Parametric analysis of event-related potentials in semantic comprehension: evidence for parallel brain mechanisms. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 15:137-53
Luu, P; Tucker, D M (2001) Regulating action: alternating activation of midline frontal and motor cortical networks. Clin Neurophysiol 112:1295-306
Janata, P (2001) Brain electrical activity evoked by mental formation of auditory expectations and images. Brain Topogr 13:169-93
Luu, P; Flaisch, T; Tucker, D M (2000) Medial frontal cortex in action monitoring. J Neurosci 20:464-9
Luu, P; Collins, P; Tucker, D M (2000) Mood, personality, and self-monitoring: negative affect and emotionality in relation to frontal lobe mechanisms of error monitoring. J Exp Psychol Gen 129:43-60

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