Purcell R, Maruff P, Kyrios M, Pantelis C
Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Australia.
Psychol Med. 1997 Nov;27(6):1277-85. doi: 10.1017/s0033291797005448.
While neuropsychological studies have consistently reported impaired cognition in elderly patients with unipolar depression, studies of cognitive function in younger patients with depression have produced equivocal results. The aim of this study was to examine the presence and nature of cognitive deficits in young patients with depression.
Neuropsychological function was assessed in 20 young patients with unipolar depression, in comparison to 20 age-, education- and IQ- matched controls. Subtests from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) were employed, as this battery has proved sensitive to deficits in middle-aged and elderly patients with depression.
The patients were not impaired for short-term memory capacity, spatial working memory, planning ability, cognitive speed, delayed matching to sample or recognition memory. Compared to controls, the patients showed impaired subsequent movement latencies on the Tower of London task, suggesting deficits in the ability to sustain motor responses in depression. The depression group were also impaired on the task of attentional set shifting, requiring more trials to criterion at the intradimensional stage of the task and being more likely to fail the task at the extradimensional shift stage than controls. Further analysis indicated that half of the depression group failed to complete all stages of the set shifting task. These patients were more likely to have required in-patient hospitalization at some time during their illness.
These results indicate that there are specific cognitive deficits in young patients with depression and that their presence may be related to a history of hospitalization.
虽然神经心理学研究一直报告单相抑郁症老年患者存在认知功能受损，但关于年轻抑郁症患者认知功能的研究结果却并不明确。本研究的目的是检查年轻抑郁症患者认知缺陷的存在情况及性质。
对20名单相抑郁症年轻患者的神经心理功能进行评估，并与20名年龄、教育程度和智商相匹配的对照组进行比较。采用剑桥神经心理测试自动成套测验（CANTAB）中的分测验，因为该成套测验已被证明对中年和老年抑郁症患者的缺陷敏感。
患者在短期记忆能力、空间工作记忆、计划能力、认知速度、延迟样本匹配或识别记忆方面未受损。与对照组相比，患者在伦敦塔任务中的后续动作潜伏期受损，这表明抑郁症患者维持运动反应的能力存在缺陷。抑郁症组在注意力转换任务中也表现受损，在任务的维度内阶段达到标准需要更多试验，并且在维度转换阶段比对照组更有可能无法完成任务。进一步分析表明，抑郁症组中有一半未能完成注意力转换任务的所有阶段。这些患者在患病期间的某个时候更有可能需要住院治疗。
这些结果表明，年轻抑郁症患者存在特定的认知缺陷，其存在可能与住院史有关。
