Memory differences by sex, but not by previous diagnosis of major depressive disorder

Abstract

Memory difficulties are consistently reported in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Nonetheless, it has not been thoroughly investigated as to whether these deficits persist during remission from MDD. A group of 32 healthy young adults with no history of a mood disorder (M_age = 20.8, SD = 2.1) and 62 remitted depressed young adults (M_age = 21.1, SD = 1.9) completed a neuropsychological battery. The test battery included two measures of nonverbal memory, two measures of verbal memory, and a measure of performance validity. The testing session was repeated three to six weeks later to determine performance stability. No differences were found between healthy controls and remitted depressed patients in either memory domain (all ps > .05) and improvement in performance was exhibited over time for both groups (p = 0.004). Potential practice effects are examined. We found a stronger performance for women than men (p = 0.003), particularly for the Semantic List Learning Task (SLLT) (p = .047). Verbal and nonverbal memory and effort may not be impacted in those who are in a remitted state of MDD, early in the course of the illness. Women demonstrated auditory memory superiority over men, similar to prior research.

Keywords:

• Depression
• remitted
• young adult
• memory
• sex

Acknowledgments

There are no competing interests to declare for all authors. We would like to thank the research assistants for their contributions in data collection, scoring, and processing: Amanda Baker, Brennan Hasse, Kortni Meyers, and Anne Weldon. Finally, we thank Gloria Harrington and Katie Lavin for their assistance in coordination and diagnostic interviewing.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the BRAINS RO1 (to S. A. Langenecker; MH 091811), UIC CTSS (1UL1RR029879), UM MCRU (UL1RR029879), internal support from the Depression and Neuropsychology Sections of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Medical Center, and internal support from the University of Illinois Department of Psychiatry, Cognitive Neuroscience Center.