ArticleBiological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging2023
Economic Choice and Heart Rate Fractal Scaling Indicate That Cognitive Effort Is Reduced by Depression and Boosted by Sad Mood.
Article in Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Physiological responses to acute psychological stress as a biomarker for depression: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological bulletinPooled it
- Fatigue Symptoms Influence Effort-Based Decision-Making in Major Depressive Disorder.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Understanding Effort-Cost Decision-Making Mechanisms in Mood and Psychotic Disorders: A Computational Modeling Approach Across Physical and Cognitive Effort Paradigms.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2026Article
- From attentional blink to emotional dysregulation: a study on the cognitive and emotional interactions in depression.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Temporal dynamics of effort discounting: The roles of cognitive load and depression.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Shared and distinct features of common effort-based decision-making paradigms and their relation to brain structure and neuropsychiatric conditions: An integrated narrative review.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Fatigue Symptoms Influence Effort-Based Decision-Making in Major Depressive Disorder.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Cellphone separation modulates the effects of working memory load on ex-Gaussian parameters of choice reaction time.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2025Article
- Vagally mediated heart rate variability modulates the association between the perceived workload and the Stroop effect on behavioral performance.Physiological reports · 2025Article
- Disgust-induced attentional blink at Lag3: a diagnostic and therapeutic approach to depression.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Major depression symptom severity associations with willingness to exert effort and patch foraging strategy.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- An experimental manipulation of the value of effort.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Long-term stability of respiratory sinus arrhythmia among adults with and without a history of depression.Psychophysiology · 2024Article
- Effort Foraging Task reveals positive correlation between individual differences in the cost of cognitive and physical effort in humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Autonomic complexity dynamically indexes affect regulation in everyday life.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2023Article
- Dissociation of Cognitive Effort-Based Decision Making and Its Associations With Symptoms, Cognition, and Everyday Life Function Across Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Depression.Biological psychiatry · 2023Article
- Comparison between the Effects of Acute Physical and Psychosocial Stress on Feedback-Based Learning.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Cognitive effort avoidance in veterans with suicide attempt histories.Acta psychologica · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
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Abstract
backgroundPeople with depression typically exhibit diminished cognitive control. Control is subjectively costly, prompting speculation that control deficits reflect reduced cognitive effort. Evidence that people with depression exert less cognitive effort is mixed, however, and motivation may depend on state affect.
methodsWe used a cognitive effort discounting task to measure propensity to expend cognitive effort and fractal structure in the temporal dynamics of interbeat intervals to assess on-task effort exertion for 49 healthy control subjects, 36 people with current depression, and 67 people with remitted depression.
resultsPeople with depression discounted more steeply, indicating that they were less willing to exert cognitive effort than people with remitted depression and never-depressed control subjects. Also, steeper discounting predicted worse functioning in daily life. Surprisingly, a sad mood induction selectively boosted motivation among participants with depression, erasing differences between them and control subjects. During task performance, depressed participants with the lowest cognitive motivation showed blunted autonomic reactivity as a function of load.
conclusionsDiscounting patterns supported the hypothesis that people with current depression would be less willing to exert cognitive effort, and steeper discounting predicted lower global functioning in daily life. Heart rate fractal scaling proved to be a highly sensitive index of cognitive load, and data implied that people with lower motivation for cognitive effort had a diminished physiological capacity to respond to rising cognitive demands. State affect appeared to influence motivation among people with current depression given that they were more willing to exert cognitive effort following a sad mood induction.
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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.