Symptom relief and facilitation of emotional processing

Symptoms and observable signs offer an important way of measuring the severity of depression and estimating recovery. However, a shift to understanding the cognitive neuroscience underlying the clinical picture has been fruitful and could change the approach in meaningful ways. Cognition as defined...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Goodwin, G
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: 2011
_version_ 1797053612062408704
author Goodwin, G
author_facet Goodwin, G
author_sort Goodwin, G
collection OXFORD
description Symptoms and observable signs offer an important way of measuring the severity of depression and estimating recovery. However, a shift to understanding the cognitive neuroscience underlying the clinical picture has been fruitful and could change the approach in meaningful ways. Cognition as defined by attention, memory and executive function is impaired in depression and offers a way of identifying abnormal brain states or structure. Moreover, such changes may limit functional recovery and explain why recurrent depression in particular is so impairing. More subtle aspects of cognition can be revealed by studies of emotional processing. Patients with depression have negative emotional biases but the measurement of such effects is confounded by the global impairments already described and may be secondary to a primary change in mood. Nevertheless, there are early effects of antidepressants treatments in healthy volunteers and depressed patients on such mechanisms specifically. It remains to be established how far the properties of antidepressants are defined by such effects both in relation to successful treatment and in their potential for emotional side effects, or blunting of experience, after recovery from depressive symptoms. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. and ECNP.
first_indexed 2024-03-06T18:46:05Z
format Journal article
id oxford-uuid:0e903e1c-a441-4d2b-a7e0-79796c5c420f
institution University of Oxford
language English
last_indexed 2024-03-06T18:46:05Z
publishDate 2011
record_format dspace
spelling oxford-uuid:0e903e1c-a441-4d2b-a7e0-79796c5c420f2022-03-26T09:46:40ZSymptom relief and facilitation of emotional processingJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:0e903e1c-a441-4d2b-a7e0-79796c5c420fEnglishSymplectic Elements at Oxford2011Goodwin, GSymptoms and observable signs offer an important way of measuring the severity of depression and estimating recovery. However, a shift to understanding the cognitive neuroscience underlying the clinical picture has been fruitful and could change the approach in meaningful ways. Cognition as defined by attention, memory and executive function is impaired in depression and offers a way of identifying abnormal brain states or structure. Moreover, such changes may limit functional recovery and explain why recurrent depression in particular is so impairing. More subtle aspects of cognition can be revealed by studies of emotional processing. Patients with depression have negative emotional biases but the measurement of such effects is confounded by the global impairments already described and may be secondary to a primary change in mood. Nevertheless, there are early effects of antidepressants treatments in healthy volunteers and depressed patients on such mechanisms specifically. It remains to be established how far the properties of antidepressants are defined by such effects both in relation to successful treatment and in their potential for emotional side effects, or blunting of experience, after recovery from depressive symptoms. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. and ECNP.
spellingShingle Goodwin, G
Symptom relief and facilitation of emotional processing
title Symptom relief and facilitation of emotional processing
title_full Symptom relief and facilitation of emotional processing
title_fullStr Symptom relief and facilitation of emotional processing
title_full_unstemmed Symptom relief and facilitation of emotional processing
title_short Symptom relief and facilitation of emotional processing
title_sort symptom relief and facilitation of emotional processing
work_keys_str_mv AT goodwing symptomreliefandfacilitationofemotionalprocessing