Posted by River1924 on February 7, 2007, at 0:04:22
Patients with depression are subject to neuropsychological deficits in attention, memory, psychomotor speed, processing speed, and executive function. When they are treated, they perform better, but they do not perform as well as normal controls.
They improve, at least to a degree, but do not "normalize." The data reported here suggest that how well they perform on neurocognitive testing may be a function of the antidepressant with which they are treated. What our data show is that depressed patients on bupropion perform as well as normals do on a battery of neurocognitive tests. Patients on venlafaxine and SSRIs do not.
These results are consistent with the hypothesis that cognitive benefit may occur relative to an antidepressant's norepinephrine activity, while lack of benefit may relate to its serotonergic activity. The noradrenergic/dopaminergic antidepressant bupropion is associated with normal function. The mixed serotonin/norepinephrine reuptake venlafaxine performs less well than bupropion but better than the SSRIs (Figure). This is consistent with the principle that enhanced norepinephrine metabolism is associated with better cognitive performance of a variety of neurocognitive tasks
poster:River1924
thread:730664
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070201/msgs/730664.html