Non-Verbal Cognitive Tasks for Depression
Non-verbal behavioral assays cross the barrier of language and age, allowing the same tasks to be applied to young children, rodents, non-human primates, and human adults. These tasks isolate “hot” affective biases (how mood alters choices) and “cold” executive controls to identify depression-like states. 1
Overview
Four primary non-verbal tasks have translational validity as cognitive-affective biomarkers for depression:
| Task | Cognitive Metric | Animal Protocol | Child Protocol |
|---|---|---|---|
| affective-bias-test | Biased memory retrieval | Digging bowl textures | Card/Object pairing |
| cognitive-judgement-bias | Pessimism vs. Optimism | Tone pitches & food | Tone pitches & touchscreens |
| delayed-match-to-sample | Visual working memory | Primate screen selection | Kids touchscreen matching |
| intradimensional-extradimensional-shift | Mental flexibility | Odor/Texture discrimination | Color/Shape discrimination |
Key References
The consensus across the literature [1, 4, 5, 13, 19] is that combining an affective bias measure (ABT or CJB) with an executive function measure (DMS or ID/ED) provides the most comprehensive assessment of depression-like cognitive dysfunction in both clinical and pre-clinical settings.
Pre-Clinical Application
For preclinical-drug-screening, these tasks enable a move beyond old “behavioural despair” assays (forced swim test) to cognitive-affective biomarkers with better face validity. The cantab battery (Cambridge Cognition) offers a standardised, touchscreen-based platform for many of these tasks, validated across clinical and pre-clinical settings.
- Disease Model Induction — Chronic Unpredictable Mild Stress (CUMS), Social Defeat Stress (SDS), or pharmacological inducers (tetrabenazine, LPS)
- Primary Screening — One task for learning bias (affective-bias-test) and one for judgment bias (cognitive-judgement-bias)
- Treatment Cohorts — Vehicle, drug control, depressed+vehicle, depressed+reference, depressed+candidate
- Key Metrics — Choice bias ratio, omission rates, locomotor activity control, sustained vs. acute clearance
Confounds
- True cognitive-affective recovery must be distinguished from simple psychostimulant effects using a parallel open field test
- Omission rates differentiate cognitive improvement from sedation
- Test at 1-hour (acute) and 24-hour (sustained) post-dose to identify long-lasting neuroplastic adjustments
Related Pages
affective-bias-test | cognitive-judgement-bias | delayed-match-to-sample | intradimensional-extradimensional-shift