ArticlePsychological medicine2018
Symptoms of depression in a large healthy population cohort are related to subjective memory complaints and memory performance in negative contexts.
Article in Psychological medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 79 citations in OpenAlex.
- The effects of perinatal depression and anxiety on memory, attention, and cognitive flexibility: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Archives of women's mental health · 2026Pooled it
- Separate neural networks of implicit emotional processing between pictures and words: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of brain imaging studies.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Pooled it
- Loneliness, Depression, and Subjective Memory Complaints in Middle-Aged and Older Adults: The Role of Meaning in Life.Psychiatry investigation · 2026Article
- Depressive symptoms as a risk factor or prodrome of dementia: multi-state cognitive transitions modified by age and polygenic risk.The journal of prevention of Alzheimer's disease · 2026Article
- Differential associations between subjective and objective physical activity and memory across adulthood: a specification curve analysis.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Fifteen years on: a review of the Cam-CAN study of the cognitive neuroscience of ageing.GeroScience · 2026Review
- Evaluation of Short Term and Long Term Subjective and Objective Cognitive Outcomes Following ECT for Depression in a Naturalistic Ambulatory Setting: A Cohort Study.Alpha psychiatry · 2026Article
- Inactive but awake behaviour as indicating a depression-like state in mice: aetiological factors and association with adult hippocampal neurogenesis.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- The effects of shared, depression-specific, and anxiety-specific internalizing symptoms on negative and neutral episodic memories following post-learning sleep.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Exploring the role of neuronal-enriched extracellular vesicle miR-93 and interoception in major depressive disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Research hotspots and nursing inspiration in research of older adults with subjective cognitive decline from 2003 to 2023: A bibliometric analysis.International journal of nursing sciences · 2024Review
- Diffusion imaging markers of accelerated aging of the lower cingulum in subjective cognitive decline.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Article
- Establishing General Working Population Norms for the Cognitive Symptom Checklist-Work.Journal of occupational rehabilitation · 2023Article
- Article
- Matrescence: lifetime impact of motherhood on cognition and the brain.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2023Review
- Novel Multimodal Salicylamide Derivative with Antidepressant-like, Anxiolytic-like, Antipsychotic-like, and Anti-Amnesic Activity in Mice.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Inconsistencies between Subjective Reports of Cognitive Difficulties and Performance on Cognitive Tests are Associated with Elevated Internalising and Externalising Symptoms in Children with Learning-related Problems.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2022Article
- Effects of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown on lifestyle and mental health of students: A retrospective study from Karachi, Pakistan.Annales medico-psychologiques · 2022Article
- Factors that influence the emotional impact of memory problems in older adults: A qualitative descriptive study.International journal of older people nursing · 2022Article
- Cognitive Test Scores and Progressive Cognitive Decline in the Aberdeen 1921 and 1936 Birth Cohorts.Brain sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundDecades of research have investigated the impact of clinical depression on memory, which has revealed biases and in some cases impairments. However, little is understood about the effects of subclinical symptoms of depression on memory performance in the general population.
methodsHere we report the effects of symptoms of depression on memory problems in a large population-derived cohort (N = 2544), 87% of whom reported at least one symptom of depression. Specifically, we investigate the impact of depressive symptoms on subjective memory complaints, objective memory performance on a standard neuropsychological task and, in a subsample (n = 288), objective memory in affective contexts.
resultsThere was a dissociation between subjective and objective memory performance, with depressive symptoms showing a robust relationship with self-reports of memory complaints, even after adjusting for age, sex, general cognitive ability and symptoms of anxiety, but not with performance on the standardised measure of verbal memory. Contrary to our expectations, hippocampal volume (assessed in a subsample, n = 592) did not account for significant variance in subjective memory, objective memory or depressive symptoms. Nonetheless, depressive symptoms were related to poorer memory for pictures presented in negative contexts, even after adjusting for memory for pictures in neutral contexts.
conclusionsThus the symptoms of depression, associated with subjective memory complaints, appear better assessed by memory performance in affective contexts, rather than standardised memory measures. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the impact of depressive symptoms on memory functioning in the general population.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.