Tackling Depression and Anxiety: A Working Memory Intervention

Summary

Anxiety and depression are both associated with impairments in executive functions, including working memory (WM) which is needed to maintain and manipulate goal-relevant information. Due to these WM impairments anxious and depressed individuals have difficulties inhibiting and shifting from irrelevant (negative) information and updating goal relevant information. This study explored whether training WM decreases these impairments and reduces clinical symptoms and rumination. Eighty-four individuals diagnosed with major depression and forty-nine individuals with an anxiety diagnosis executed WM or control tasks three times a week, during four weeks. Before, after training and at a two months follow-up measurement depression and anxiety symptoms, WM capacity and rumination behaviour were assessed. Training WM did only result in a reduction of anxiety symptoms in the depression group. These findings are inconsistent with promising results of individual studies showing training WM result in an enlarged WM capacity and a decrease of psychopathological symptoms. However, our results are in line with recent meta-analyses and reviews which show that WM training do not lead to generalized effects and therefore, doubt the clinical relevance of WM training programs.

Conditions

• Major Depression
• Anxiety Disorder

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Working memory training

The WM consisted of two tasks; the Number-letter task (Rogers \& Monsell, 1995) and an Updating task. The Number-letter task trains the ability to shift between task relevant stimuli. Participants need to shift between four categories. In the Updating task participants receive a set of three words in which they have to compare the two consecutive words on emotional valence (positive or negative) to train their updating skills. Participants executed the training three times a week during four weeks.

BEHAVIORAL

Placebo training

Both the WM and the placebo training consisted of two tasks; the Number-letter task (Rogers \& Monsell, 1995) and an Updating task. To prevent training WM the placebo training was a simplified version of the Number-letter task in which shifting was not required. In the Updating task the placebo group only had to count the number of positive or negative words. Participants executed the training three times a week during four weeks.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Erasmus Medical Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Elke Geraerts, PhD · Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Sabine Wanmaker, MSc · Erasmus University Rotterdam

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

16 Years

Max Age

68 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2011-04-30

Primary Completion

2011-10-31

Completion

2011-10-31

Countries

• Netherlands

Study Locations