Abstract
Rumination is a narrowed, often uncontrolled, attentional focus on feelings of sadness and is a key moderator depression, however, the mechanisms that may link it to the disorder remain unclear. Increased prefrontal activation during cognitive tasks is often observed in depression and may reflect inefficient recruitment of neural functions supporting the control over attention as well as emotion regulation. Therefore, the current study examined the degree that rumination may be associated with dysregulation of prefrontal functions that support cognitive control. The current study used a visual working memory (WM) task that involved remembering either 4 or 6 target locations across a short delay. After the delay participants determined if a probe matched or did not match target locations. An electroencephalogram was recorded within the delay period to measure frontal activation during successful memory of the target locations. Consistent with previous literature, a sustained and frontal negative slow wave amplitude (frontal NSW) sensitive to memory load was observed during the delay period. It was found that increased levels of rumination were significantly associated with an overall increase of frontal NSW amplitudes. Rumination was not significantly associated with accuracy and reaction time in the task. Neural results were maintained after controlling for levels of depression. Together, results show that rumination is associated with an increased recruitment of frontal processes supporting WM, and so may relate to neural inefficiency that characterizes depression. Results are discussed in relation to models of WM, depression, and rumination.