Normalizing and validating that part of depression is important, so it’s not as scary,” Holmberg says. I think clinicians are increasingly aware. “Patients are very aware of cognitive impairments. Outside of the lab, Holmberg says that physicians and psychiatrists working with patients on the clinical side are beginning to discuss memory and memory-related issues with their patients. “We still have a poor functional understanding of what’s going on with memory and depression,” says Dillon. What’s more, some people prone to depression may have smaller hippocampi before developing the disease. “There’s no reason it would disrupt just positive memories,” explains Dillon. A small hippocampus doesn’t explain the emotional component of memory troubles.
#People with bad memories full
Those findings may not provide the full picture. Rumination, or fixating on upsetting situations or events, occupies neural resources that the brain could spend on other things, like memory. In addition, the ruminative thoughts characteristic of the disorder could make it hard for people to concentrate on other tasks. “Diminished hippocampal volume could explain poor recollection,” Dillon says. The area of the brain dealing with learning and memory - the hippocampus - is sensitive to stress, and tends to be smaller in people with depression. The brain may reveal some clues about depression’s hold over memory. When people who were formerly depressed recalled happy memories their sad moods did not change. Scientists conducting research in 2007 examined the role of positive memory in mood regulation, finding that depressed people’s moods worsened when encouraged to recall happy memories. People who previously had depression were better at remembering negative adjectives from a selection of words than the group who had never been depressed. In 2014, researchers examined negative cognition in people who were formerly depressed and a group who never had depression. “It’s obvious to people, and more obvious in the clinical interview - you have this dominant negative recall.” “In depressed folks, people think negative memory improves, but really, the positive bias has decreased,” Dillon says. Meanwhile, depressed people have a stronger recall for bad memories. Healthy, non-depressed people usually have a better memory for positive events than neutral or negative events, says Daniel Dillon, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard University. While details and prospective memory take a hit, there’s no trouble recalling bad memories. It’s harder to remember to return a library book or take a daily medication. People’s prospective memory, or remembering to carry out a planned activity in the future, also suffers under depression. General experiences, like a vacation, come to mind easily but not the specifics, like an enjoyable meal from the vacation. These anecdotal reports reflect a growing body of research showing that depression can affect memory and cognition in diverse and surprising ways.ĭepressed people have trouble remembering fine details of events they’ve experienced. “People often point to just not being able to function as well.” Patients may have trouble finding their keys or retaining information they’ve read in a book. “When I see patients, they complain of memory problems,” says Carrie Holmberg, a postdoc in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University who studies the mood disorder.
Happy things appear muted, and bad news sounds even worse. Under the fog of depression, the daily task isn’t just tedious, it can seem purposeless. Sometimes, it’s difficult to get out of bed.
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