Faculty
Social Science (Psychology)
Supervisor Name
Stefan Kohler
Keywords
Depression, Pattern Separation, Memory, Mental Health
Description
Previous research has suggested that depression is related to cognitive impairments including memory. Research has indicated that a specific process of memory, called pattern separation, is impaired during a behavioral performance task compared to healthy individuals. Pattern separation is a memory process by which similar representations are transformed into distinct non-overlapping representations (Stark, Kirwan, and Stark (2019). Impaired pattern separation may affect the ability to discriminate information appropriately and lead to interference between memories (Bernstein & McNally, 2019) which may underlie common depressive symptoms. Our study aimed to assess behavioral performance in a more severely depressed population of patients awaiting electroconvulsive therapy for treatment-resistant depression, which has yet to be addressed in the literature. We discovered that patients with depression showed poorer recognition but did not differ in discrimination performance compared to controls. This may relate to more widespread memory impairment compared to individuals with mild or moderate depression.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Darren Liang, Dr. Stefan Kohler, and Kohler Memory Lab for guidance and supervision throughout the project. Thank you also to those who made the Western USRI possible.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Document Type
Poster
Depression and Memory: Investigating Pattern Separation Performance in Individuals with Treatment-Resistant Depression
Previous research has suggested that depression is related to cognitive impairments including memory. Research has indicated that a specific process of memory, called pattern separation, is impaired during a behavioral performance task compared to healthy individuals. Pattern separation is a memory process by which similar representations are transformed into distinct non-overlapping representations (Stark, Kirwan, and Stark (2019). Impaired pattern separation may affect the ability to discriminate information appropriately and lead to interference between memories (Bernstein & McNally, 2019) which may underlie common depressive symptoms. Our study aimed to assess behavioral performance in a more severely depressed population of patients awaiting electroconvulsive therapy for treatment-resistant depression, which has yet to be addressed in the literature. We discovered that patients with depression showed poorer recognition but did not differ in discrimination performance compared to controls. This may relate to more widespread memory impairment compared to individuals with mild or moderate depression.