Time course of processing emotional stimuli as a function of perceived emotional intelligence, anxiety, and depression.

An individual's self-reported abilities to attend to, understand, and reinterpret emotional situations or events have been associated with anxiety and depression, but it is unclear how these abilities affect the processing of emotional stimuli, especially in individuals with these symptoms. The present study recorded event-related brain potentials while individuals reporting features of anxiety and depression completed an emotion-word Stroop task. Results indicated that anxious apprehension, anxious arousal, and depression were associated with self-reported emotion abilities, consistent with prior literature. In addition, lower anxious apprehension and greater reported emotional clarity were related to slower processing of negative stimuli indexed by event-related potentials (ERPs). Higher anxious arousal and reported attention to emotion were associated with ERP evidence of early attention to all stimuli regardless of emotional content. Reduced later engagement with stimuli was also associated with anxious arousal and with clarity of emotions. Depression was not differentially associated with any emotion processing stage indexed by ERPs. Research in this area may lead to the development of therapies that focus on minimization of anxiety to foster successful emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depression and anxious apprehension distinguish frontocingulate cortical activity during top-down attentional control.

A network consisting of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (LDLPFC) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) has been implicated in top-down attentional control. Few studies have systematically investigated how this network is altered in psychopathology, despite evidence that depression and anxiety are associated with attentional control impairments. Functional MRI and dense-array event-related brain potential (ERP) data were collected in separate sessions from 100 participants during a color–word Stroop task. Functional MRI results guided ERP source modeling to characterize the time course of activity in LDLPFC (300–440 ms) and dACC (520–680 ms). At low levels of depression, LDLPFC activity was indirectly related to Stroop interference and only via dACC activity. In contrast, at high levels of depression, dACC did not play an intervening role, and increased LDLPFC activity was directly related to decreased Stroop interference. Specific to high levels of anxious apprehension, higher dACC activity was related to more Stroop interference. Results indicate that depression and anxious apprehension modulate temporally and functionally distinct aspects of the frontocingulate network involved in top-down attention control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Screening for depressive disorders using the Mood and Anxiety Symptoms Questionnaire Anhedonic Depression Scale: A receiver-operating characteristic analysis.

The present study examined the utility of the anhedonic depression scale from the Mood and Anxiety Symptoms Questionnaire (MASQ–AD scale) as a way to screen for depressive disorders. Using receiver-operating characteristic analysis, we examined the sensitivity and specificity of the full 22-item MASQ–AD scale, as well as the 8- and 14-item subscales, in relation to both current and lifetime Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) depressive disorder diagnoses in two nonpatient samples. As a means of comparison, the sensitivity and specificity of a measure of a relevant personality dimension, Neuroticism, was also examined. Results from both samples support the clinical utility of the MASQ–AD scale as a means of screening for depressive disorders. Findings were strongest for the MASQ–AD 8-item subscale and when predicting current depression status. Furthermore, the MASQ–AD 8-item subscale outperformed the Neuroticism measure under certain conditions. The overall usefulness of the MASQ–AD scale as a screening device is discussed, as are possible cutoff scores for use in research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)