Study On The Dysfunction Of Internal Switching In Patients With Depression

Depression is characterized by prominent and persistent low mood,slow thought and reduced activity,often accompanied by anxiety,sense of uselessness and helplessness.Some patients may have the tendency of self injury and suicide.Previous studies have shown that internal cognitive control dysfunctions may play an important role in the development of depression.The subjects are required by the internal shifting task to count the random face images to capture and divert attention.These faces belong to several different categories.Subjects need to report the number of face in each category.In recent years,many researches have explored the shifting dysfunction of depression patients through the internal shifting task,but there is no conclusion about whether the dysfunction of internal switching of depression patients is general or emotion-specific dysfunction.In this study,depression patients in psychiatric clinic and healthy individuals are taken as the research objects.We used emotion(neutral and angry faces)and gender(male and female faces)pictures,which can divide them into emotion shifting,gender shifting with neutral&negative face and gender shifting with neutral face.It can measure the ability of shifting attention among different items in working memory and explore whether depression patients have general or emotion-specific dysfunction through the internal shifting task.Considering that the switching ability is related to depression,rumination and anxiety in previous studies,the subjects need to complete self-evaluation scales and other-evaluation scales after completing the task.Finally,so that we can analyze the relationship between rumination,depression,anxiety and internal shifting ability.The results showed that the switch cost of emotion shifting and gender shifting with neutral&negative face of depressive patients were significantly higher than that of healthy individuals,while their switch cost of gender shifting with neutral face had no difference between groups.There was no difference between the three switch costs in the healthy individuals and the depression patients.And there was no emotion-specific valence in the state of emotion shifting.The non emotion-specific ability of switching function of depression patients have positive correlation with depression factor,brood factor and reflection factor of rumination and rumination.And the reflection factor of depression patients’ rumination can positively predict their emotion shifting dysfunction.The non emotion-specific ability of switching function of healthy individuals have positive correlation with depression factor,brood factor and reflection factor of rumination,rumination,state anxiety and trait anxiety.The rumination of healthy individuals can significantly predict their non emotion-specific ability of switching function.Generally speaking,depression patients were characterized by a emotionspecific switching dysfunction,which was not influenced by the valence of the faces within the emotion condition but the task-relevance of emotional information.The results of this study provide new insights into the relationship between depression and cognitive control dysfunction.It have potential clinical significance which provide effective information for depression patients’ treatment and prevention.