Review of Emotion Regulation in Late Life Mood Disorders.

Emotion regulation (ER), or the ability to modulate the experience and expression of emotion, is critical to adaptive functioning and is a key feature of mood disorders. At the same time, normal aging is associated with changes in ER, though the interaction of aging with the presence of a mood disorder are unclear. Here, we review what is known about ER and its underlying neural mechanisms in late life mood disorders, specifically late life depression and bipolar disorder.

The relationship between personality and cognition in older adults with and without early-onset depression.

Introduction: It is well established that personality traits impact cognition, as certain personality factors are associated with performance in specific cognitive domains. However, the findings on the relationships between the Big Five traits and cognition are mixed. Additionally, few studies have explored these relationships in older adults with a history of depression.

Treatment resistant late-life depression: A narrative review of psychosocial risk factors, non-pharmacological interventions, and the role of clinical phenotyping.

Background: Treatment resistant depression (TRD) is a subset of major depressive disorder (MDD) in which symptoms do not respond to front line therapies. In older adults, the assessment and treatment of TRD is complicated by psychosocial risk factors unique to this population, as well as a relative paucity of research.

Methods: Narrative review aimed at (1) defining TRLLD for clinical practice and research; (2) describing psychosocial risk factors; (3) reviewing psychological and non-pharmacological treatments; (4) discussing the role of clinical phenotyping for personalized treatment; and (5) outlining research priorities.

Combinatorial Pharmacogenomic Testing Improves Outcomes for Older Adults With Depression.

(Reprinted with permission from 2020; 28:933-945).

Revisiting Apathy in Alzheimer's Disease: From Conceptualization to Therapeutic Approaches.

Apathy is a neurobehavioral syndrome characterized by impaired motivation for goal-directed behaviors and cognitive activity, alongside blunted affect. Apathy is a common neuropsychiatric syndrome in Alzheimer's disease (AD), with a 5-year prevalence over 70%. Apathy also serves as a prognostic indicator, correlating with the progression of AD.

Combinatorial Pharmacogenomic Testing Improves Outcomes for Older Adults With Depression.

Objective: Evaluate the clinical utility of combinatorial pharmacogenomic testing for informing medication selection among older adults who have experienced antidepressant medication failure for major depressive disorder (MDD).

Design: Post hoc analysis of data from a blinded, randomized controlled trial comparing two active treatment arms.

Setting: Psychiatry specialty and primary care clinics across 60 U.

A Critical Review and Synthesis of Clinical and Neurocognitive Effects of Noninvasive Neuromodulation Antidepressant Therapies.

There is a plethora of current and emerging antidepressant therapies in the psychiatric armamentarium for the treatment of major depressive disorder. Noninvasive neuromodulation therapies are one such therapeutic category; they typically involve the transcranial application of electrical or magnetic stimulation to modulate cortical and subcortical brain activity. Although electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been used since the 1930s, with the prevalence of major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression (TRD), the past three decades have seen a proliferation of noninvasive neuromodulation antidepressant therapeutic development.

A Lifespan Model of Interference Resolution and Inhibitory Control: Risk for Depression and Changes with Illness Progression.

The cognitive processes involved in inhibitory control accuracy (IC) and interference resolution speed (IR) or broadly - inhibition - are discussed in this review, and both are described within the context of a lifespan model of mood disorders. Inhibitory control (IC) is a binary outcome (success or no for response selection and inhibition of unwanted responses) for any given event that is influenced to an extent by IR. IR refers to the process of inhibition, which can be manipulated by task design in earlier and later stages through use of distractors and timing, and manipulation of individual differences in response proclivity.

Questioning the Effort Hypothesis That Depressed Patients Perform Disproportionately Worse on Effortful Cognitive Tasks.

The debate over Hasher and Zacks’ (1979) effort hypothesis – that performance on effortful tasks by patients with depression will be disproportionately worse than their performance on automatic tasks – shows a need for additional research to settle whether or not this notion is “clinical lore.” In this study, we categorized 285 outpatient recipients of neuropsychological evaluations into three groups - No Depression, Mild-to-Moderate Depression, and Severe Depression - based on their Beck Depression Inventory −2 (BDI-2) self-reports. We then compared these groups’ performances on both “automatic” and “effortful” versions of the Ruff 2 & 7 Selective Attention Test Total Speed and Total Accuracy Indices, the Digit Span subtest from the WAIS-IV, and Trail Making Test Parts A and B, using a two-way (3 × 2) mixed MANOVA.

Memory differences by sex, but not by previous diagnosis of major depressive disorder.

Memory difficulties are consistently reported in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Nonetheless, it has not been thoroughly investigated as to whether these deficits persist during remission from MDD. A group of 32 healthy young adults with no history of a mood disorder ( = 20.

Linking late life depression and Alzheimer's disease: mechanisms and resilience.

Purpose Of Review: This review summarizes recent literature linking Alzheimer's disease (AD) and late life depression (LLD). It describes shared neurobiological features associated with both conditions, as well as factors that may increase resilience to onset and severity of cognitive decline and AD. Finally, we pose a number of future research directions toward improving detection, management, and treatment of both conditions.

Ventral prefrontal cortex and emotion regulation in aging: A case for utilizing transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Objectives: The ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) has been speculated to play an important role in complex processes that allow emotional factors to influence human cognition. Accumulating evidence from human neuroimaging studies, in conjunction with studies of patients with lesions and animal models, shed light on the role of the vlPFC in emotion regulation (ER). This review aims to discuss and integrate recent findings related to vlPFC's role in ER in the context of aging, drawing from diverse sources, and suggest future directions for research utilizing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

A pilot investigation of differential neuroendocrine associations with fronto-limbic activation during semantically-cued list learning in mood disorders.

Background: Decreased volume and disrupted function in neural structures essential for memory formation (e.g. medial temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex) are common among individuals with depression.

Examining HPA-axis functioning as a mediator of the relationship between depression and cognition across the adult lifespan.

Altered HPA-axis functioning is a hypothesized mechanism for worsened cognition in depression. The current study examines the indirect effects of depression on processing speed, executive functioning, and memory as a function of the HPA-axis. 38 individuals with a depression diagnosis and 50 healthy controls (HCs) aged 18-86 underwent neuropsychological testing and at-home diurnal salivary cortisol collection.

Integrated cross-network connectivity of amygdala, insula, and subgenual cingulate associated with facial emotion perception in healthy controls and remitted major depressive disorder.

Emotion perception deficits could be due to disrupted connectivity of key nodes in the salience and emotion network (SEN), including the amygdala, subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), and insula. We examined SEN resting-state (rs-)fMRI connectivity in rMDD in relation to Facial Emotion Perception Test (FEPT) performance. Fifty-two medication-free people ages 18 to 23 years participated.

Social-emotional aspects of quality of life in multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory auto-immune disease of the central nervous system. It leads to many impairments including physical, cognitive, psychological, and social challenges. Our study examined gender and cultural associations with quality of life (QoL), personal characteristics, and benefits from having MS among those with MS.

Considering sex differences clarifies the effects of depression on facial emotion processing during fMRI.

Background: Sex differences in emotion processing may play a role in women's increased risk for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). However, studies of sex differences in brain mechanisms involved in emotion processing in MDD (or interactions of sex and diagnosis) are sparse.

Methods: We conducted an event-related fMRI study examining the interactive and distinct effects of sex and MDD on neural activity during a facial emotion perception task.

Executive Functioning at Baseline Prospectively Predicts Depression Treatment Response.

Objective: Existing cognitive and clinical predictors of treatment response to date are not of sufficient strength to meaningfully impact treatment decision making and are not readily employed in clinical settings. This study investigated whether clinical and cognitive markers used in a tertiary care clinic could predict response to usual treatment over a period of 4 to 6 months in a sample of 75 depressed adults.

Methods: Patients (N = 384) were sequentially tested in 2 half-day clinics as part of a quality improvement project at an outpatient tertiary care center between August 2003 and September 2007; additional subjects evaluated in the clinic between 2007 and 2009 were also included.