Is there a cognitive marker in major depression?

The purpose of this study was to compare adolescents' response pattern on specific visual tasks during acute and recovered states of depression. Twenty-three inpatient adolescents with unipolar depression were tested before and four weeks after treatment. Twenty control subjects matched in age, sex, handedness, and intelligence were tested at similar intervals. Measures included four visual spatial tasks: the Gestalt Street Completion Test, the Judgment of Line Orientation, the Hooper Visual Organization Test and the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure. Overall, the results indicated that depressed adolescents performed significantly more poorly than controls in all four measures during both pre-and posttest conditions. They demonstrated greatest difficulty in measures of Gestalt Closure and Judgment of Line Orientation. However, the Gestalt Closure task was the only one to be correlated to severity of depression. These findings are discussed in the light of previous research suggesting a right hemisphere dysfunction and the existence of a cognitive marker in affective disorders.