| dc.description.abstract | Mood disorders are common, complex, and one of the main causes of morbidity worldwide (1).
There has been an increasing recognition that cognitive dysfunction is a central aspect of most
mood disorders, as well as being closely related to the functional impairment that these disorders
commonly cause (2, 3). Therefore, appropriate assessment and management of cognitive
impairment(s) in mood disorders is important for the optimal treatment of these disorders more
broadly. Research in these areas is ongoing and has the potential to improve our understanding of
the neurobiological and neuropsychological mechanisms underpinning cognitive dysfunction in
affective illness. In addition, developing tools to measure cognitive deficits more objectively, may
augment the diagnosis of affective disorder and support current, and future efforts, to improve the
classification of psychological symptoms and processes in psychiatry (4). This could allow for the
identification of patterns of cognitive deficits which may be more amenable to certain treatments or
may be of prognostic utility.
In this editorial, we seek to summarize and organize the research literature published in this
special Research Topic — Cognition in Mood Disorders. In this special edition, research papers
published within this topic will be discussed within the following headings: the neurobiology of
cognition, experimental models for understanding cognition, potential predictive cognitive markers,
and the assessment and management of cognitive dysfunction, in mood disorders. | en |
