Is Depression Clouding Your Memory? Depressive Thoughts Persevere With Illness

Those with depression may deal with feelings of despondency for extended periods--clouding the amount of information that they can hold in their memory, according to a recent study.

Researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas recruited 75 undergrated students for the study; 35 of whom were classified with depressive symptoms and 45 of whom did not exhibit depressive symptoms. All were asked to respond to a sentence that featured a depressive thought, including "I am sad" or "People don't like me," and then asked to respond to neutral information while recalling a string of numbers.

The findings revealed that the depressed individuals who were given a depressive thought first remembered 31 percent fewer numbers when compared to those without depressed mood and those with depressed mood given the number string first.

"We all have a fixed amount of information we can hold in memory at one time," explained the study's lead author, Nick Hubbard, a doctoral candidate at the Center for BrainHealth working with Dr. Rypma, in a news release. "The fact that depressive thoughts do not seem to go away once they enter memory certainly explains why depressed individuals have difficulty concentrating or remembering things in their daily lives. This preoccupation of memory by depressive thoughts might also explain why more positive thoughts are often absent in depression; there simply is not enough space for them."

The study authors believe this shows how depressive thoughts can disrupt our ability to hold even positive thoughts in our memory. They believe that with future research, this may be a key to understanding how depressive develops through a patient's lifespan. 

The study is published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. 

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