Abnormal proactive and reactive cognitive control during conflict processing in major depression

According to the Dual Mechanisms of Control framework, cognitive control consists of two complementary components: proactive control refers to anticipatory maintenance of goal-relevant information, whereas reactive control acts as a correction mechanism that is activated when a conflict occurs. Possibly, the well-known diminished inhibitory control in response to negative stimuli in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) patients stems from a breakdown in proactive control, and/or anomalies in reactive cognitive control. In our study, MDD patients specifically showed increased response latencies when actively inhibiting a dominant response to a sad compared with a happy face. This condition was associated with a longer duration of a dominant ERP topography (800-900 ms poststimulus onset) and a stronger activity in the bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, reflecting abnormal reactive control when inhibiting attention to a negative stimulus. Moreover, MDD patients showed abnormalities in proactive cognitive control when preparing for the upcoming imperative stimulus (abnormal modulation of the contingent negative variation component), accompanied by more activity in brain regions belonging to the default mode network. All together, deficits to inhibit attention to negative information in MDD might originate from an abnormal use of both proactive resources and reactive control processes.