[Executive functions and serotonin activity in patients with depression. A connection mirrors the influence of serotonin on prefrontal cortex].
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Adult↗
Biomedical subjects
A Degl'Innocenti
Publications and source records attributed to A Degl'Innocenti.
The influence of prolactin response to d-fenfluramine on executive functioning in major depression.
BACKGROUND: The main purpose of this study was to assess the influence of serotonergic activity, as measured by prolactin response to d-fenfluramine, on executive functioning in major depression. METHODS: Forty-one persons between 22 and 71 years of age who met the DSM-IV criteria for major depressive episode were administered the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) in computerized format, and d-fenfluramine was administered orally. Postfenfluramine blood samples for ascertaining plasma prolactin levels were obtained. RESULTS: The key finding was that prolactin response was positively related to four out of five selected WCST variables. Also, increasing age was associated with decreasing WCST performance. There was no interaction between prolactin response and age, indicating that the effects of prolactin response on the WCST generalized across the age range examined. CONCLUSIONS: The overall pattern of results suggests that there may be a relationship between serotonergic activity and executive functioning in major depression.
Adult↗
Source memory in major depression.
BACKGROUND: Research demonstrating episodic memory deficits in clinical depression has dealt with item memory exclusively. The present research sought to determine whether memory for source is differentially affected by depression. METHODS: Patients with major depression and normal control subjects were examined in item memory and two types of source memory, requiring discriminations between (e.g. something that the subject said and something another person said) and within (e.g. something that one person said and something another person said) classes. RESULTS: Depression-related deficits in item memory were exacerbated in source memory. However, deficits in source memory in depressed patients were restricted to those conditions requiring within-class discriminations. CONCLUSION: The overall pattern of results may reflect that those symptoms of major depression that affect the individuals basic processing resources (e.g. concentration difficulties, lack of effort, loss of energy) results in an impairment of episodic memory, particularly when the demands of differentiating perceptual and cognitive information are high.
Adult↗
Executive deficits in major depression.
Clinically depressed patients and control subjects were examined by means of different tests to assess executive functions (the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Stroop Color Word Test and a test of verbal fluency). The results indicate that the depressed patients were generally slower than the controls, as reflected by longer retrieval times for both words and colours. Furthermore, the depressed patients showed impairment with regard to altering behaviour appropriately in response to feedback. However, there were no depression-related increases in perseverative responses, and the ability to inhibit irrelevant information was unaffected by depression. No relationship was found between specific depressive symptoms or the severity of depression and cognitive performance. The overall pattern of results suggests that depression may affect various executive functions in a differentiated manner.
Analysis of Variance↗