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Updated: Jul 20, 2026
08:42
Design and Implementation of an fMRI Study Examining Thought Suppression in Young Women with, and At-risk, for Depression
Published on: May 19, 2015
Facilitated cognitive disengagement in depression.
Joost van den Elzen1, Colin MacLeod
1The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Perth, Australia.
Behavior Therapy
|September 1, 2006
Summary
This study suggests depression may help individuals disengage from outdated cognitive plans. Highly depressed students showed better performance when needing to adapt to new tasks, indicating an adaptive function of depression.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Clinical Psychology
Background:
- Depression is often viewed as maladaptive.
- An alternative perspective suggests depression might serve adaptive functions.
- Specifically, it may facilitate disengagement from obsolete cognitive plans.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the hypothesis that depression adaptively facilitates disengagement from obsolete cognitive plans.
- To investigate the relationship between depression levels and cognitive flexibility.
Main Methods:
- A study involving student participants with low or high depression scores.
- A two-phase procedure: initial learning of a task, followed by a relearning phase with an altered task.
- Assessing performance based on the ability to disengage from initial learning.
Main Results:
- Participants with high depression scores demonstrated superior performance in the relearning phase compared to those with low depression scores.
- This suggests that higher levels of depression are associated with a greater ability to disengage from previously learned information.
Conclusions:
- The findings support the hypothesis that depression may have an adaptive role in facilitating disengagement from obsolete cognitive plans.
- This challenges traditional views of depression and suggests potential therapeutic implications.
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