Cognitive control in depression and anxiety: out of control?

- There are few behavioral effects during cognitive control tasks in depression and anxiety.
- There is strong evidence for brain processing alterations in depression and anxiety.
- Rumination, worrying, attention, and inhibition affect cognitive control tasks.
- Future studies should integrate psychopathology, paradigms, and computational approaches.

The recent literature on cognitive control dysfunctions in depression and anxiety is reviewed with particular emphasis on evidence for proactive and reactive control deficits. Individuals with depression and anxiety show few, if any, specific control deficits, however, there is evidence for non-specific interference that can be related to problems with rumination, worrying, attention and inhibition. Moreover, both electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies provide strong evidence for altered processing during cognitive control paradigms in depression and anxiety. Thus a layered model of control deficits is proposed, which presumes that agent-specific, task-irrelevant factors contribute to cognitive control processing alterations in anxiety and depression. A Bayesian Ideal Observer model is suggested as a possible approach to better disambiguate the dysfunctional processes in depression and anxiety.