Lecture 5: Neuropsychiatry Flashcards
Which cognitive domain is mostly affected in MDD?
EF (significant association between depression severity and EF deficits)
What are 2 types of biased information processing in MDD?
- Attentional bias = people that already are feeling down, tend to be more focused on negative stimuli and information
- Mood congruency effect = we are better able to remember information that is congruent with our mood than neutral information
Which type of inhibition is mostly impaired in MDD? And in ADHD?
MDD: cognitive inhibition
ADHD: motor inhibition
Which type of fluency is mostly impaired in MDD? And in ADHD?
MDD: mainly semantic fluency
ADHD: mainly phonemic fluency
What are the differences between depression and dementia?
- Level of insight
- Observations
- Affect
- Orientation
- Level of insight: in depression there is awareness of shortcomings, in dementia not (with a tenency toward husing up failures)
- Observations: in depression (1) limited cooperation, reduced errors (2) stereotype answers like “I don’t know” (3) inconsistent performance. In dementia (1) often good cooperation, wants to ‘put up a good show’ (2) often incorrect answers (3) consistent performance)
- Affect: in depression constant gloomy/depressed, in dementia changeable
- Orientation: in depression good but slowed down, in dementia disturbed
Why off-task behavior in ADHD?
This is related to the goal-directed aspect of EF > if it’s not up to date in your WM anymore, you cannot focus on your goal, get distracted, and start doing something else.
Name some adult symptoms in ADHD.
- More mental hyperactivity
- Impulsivity
- Easily distracted
- Underestimating time (difficulty planning, missing appointments)
- Attention lapses (missing parts of conversation)
- Lack of focus (doing too many things at the same time)
- Procrastinating (avoiding tasks that require concentration)
What are 3 persistent deficits in communication and interaction in ASD?
- Social-emotional reciprocity
- Nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction
- Developing/ maintaining/ understanding relationships
What are 4 types of restricted, repetitive behaviors in ASD?
- Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements
- Inflexible adherence to routines (rigidity)
- Highly restricted/fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus
- Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input
What is the most salient cognitive deficit in ASD?
Cognitive flexibility
What is ToM? And can you name 2 subtypes?
The ability to attribute mental states to ourselves and others, serving as one of the foundational elements for social interaction
- Social cognition = cognitive understanding of other people’s mental states
- Social performance = competence in applying ToM skills in real life
What is context blindness?
A decreased ability to sponaneously use context in attributing meaning to stimuli, especially when ambiguous, vague, new, or incomplete
What is the central coherence theory?
Suggests tha the limited ability to understand context or “see the big picture” underlies the central disturbance in autism. Someone with ASD will not look at the context as a whole, but rather at the details
What is a common cognitive deficit in all discussed neuropsychiatric disorders?
A common deficit in EF (which may be a transdiagnostic intermediate phenotype)
What are 3 frontal-subcortical circuits? And which cognitive functions do they preserve?
- Dorsolateral PFC network: executive dysfunction
- Lateral orbitofrontal network: disinhibition, personality changes
- Anterior cingulate network: apathy (absent motivation)
