The effect of negative mood and major depressive episode on working memory and implicit learning

Major depressive episode (MDE) is one of the most common psychiatric diagnoses and it has long-term mental and physiological consequences. The status of cognitive functions is of specific importance in case of affective disorders, due to their influence not only on patients' behaviour, but to a certain extent also on the success of psychotherapy. In addition, examining the impact of mood and affective disorders on cognitive functions also helps us understand the relationship between brain plasticity and neurocognitive networks. While the relationship between explicit, conscious memory and mood are relatively well-explored, the effect of mood and affective disorders on working memory and implicit sequence learning received less attention. The present review aims to overview available results in these less-explored areas. Research suggests that while working memory performance shows impairments in MDE and in some specific mood conditions, effects of affective disorders and mood on implicit sequence learning are more contradictory, highlighting the need for further studies in this field.