Symptoms of depression in a large healthy population cohort are related to subjective memory complaints and memory performance in negative contexts

What is it about?

At one time or another virtually everyone experiences low mood. Yet, little is known about the effects of depressive symptoms on cognition in the general population. Here we showed that greater levels of depressive symptoms are not reliably associated with the ability to recall verbal information despite depressive symptoms increasing the likelihood of individuals reporting memory problems. Higher levels of depression were however associated with worse memory for objects that were presented together with distracting negative images, but not when the distractors were neutral or positive. This is, interesting and suggests that when people are feeling low they may find it particularly difficult to remember information when they are distracted by content that matches their mood state.

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Why is it important?

Symptoms of depression are very common in the general population, but we know little about their effect on cognition in non-clinical samples. Our study suggests that memory performance in negative but not positive or neutral contexts decreases as a function of depressive symptomatology.