PSYCHOLOGY TODAY | Negative Memory Bias and Depression
Coping with depression is no easy task. Despite being one of the most widespread forms of psychiatric pathology, the simple answer is that researchers are not certain {what causes depression}. As noted above, some depressive episodes may be triggered by trauma, but other factors—including one’s neurochemistry, one’s neural architecture, and how well one’s brain responds to stress—can have an impact on how susceptible an individual is to depression.
The hippocampus also plays a role in processing negative or stressfulinformation, which suggests that it could be possible to test the cognitive theory of depression proposed by Beck in a lab. Using murine models, researchers at the Douglas Hospital Research Centre at McGill University in Montreal recently did just that. The team, Zhang et al, published their findings in the Journal of Neuroscience in August.
