Understanding Cognition in Patients With MDD
In this video, Bernhard T. Baune, PhD, MD, discusses the research needed to improve clinicians' understanding of cognition in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD).
Dr. Baune, head of the Department of Mental Health at the University of Münster, Germany, presented "Advances in Understanding Neurobiological Underpinnings and Treatment Interfaces of Cognition in Depression" at the Psych Congress 2020 preconference on psychopharmacology.
Read the transcript:
The research needed to enhance or improve the understanding of cognition in MDD is probably in various areas.
One area is, which I've touched on before, that antidepressants need to be kept with some sensibility around negative effects of cognition. So we need to better understand which of the antidepressants do have actually positive and independent effects on cognition. So that's one area of research.
The other area is to look at new compounds and perhaps, also, looking, identifying new compounds which have specific effects on cognitive function, in addition to having effects on MDD or mood symptoms more broadly.
These might include anti-inflammatory or immune modulating drugs, but also other receptor specific drugs like 5-HT4 or other receptors which are experimentally quite promising.
The third major area of research would need to look into the combination of both pharmacological treatment and psychological treatment and how to best combine those two areas.
