Depression is known to change the way people seek out rewards, but new research suggests it may also make it harder to learn how to avoid unpleasant experiences.
A study published in eNeuro by scientists at the University of British Columbia explored how depressive symptoms affect the ability to learn strategies that help people steer clear of negative outcomes.
The team, led by researcher Ryan Tomm, brought together experts in neuroscience, psychology, and clinical research to bridge gaps between lab-based findings and real-world mental health challenges.
Their focus was on “avoidance learning”—how we learn to take action, or hold back from acting, to prevent something unpleasant from happening.
To test this, they designed a behavioral task based on earlier rodent studies. Human volunteers were asked to listen to sounds while watching visual cues on a screen.
Some cues signaled that an unpleasant sound was about to play.
Participants could avoid the unpleasant sound either by pressing a button at the right time or by withholding a response. In this way, the researchers could measure how well people learned to avoid negative outcomes.
The study included 465 participants, ranging from individuals with very mild depressive symptoms to those with severe symptoms.
The results revealed a clear pattern: people with more severe depression had difficulty learning to actively avoid unpleasant sounds compared with those with fewer symptoms.
In other words, depression seemed to interfere with the early stages of learning how to act in order to prevent something unpleasant.
However, once participants with higher levels of depression did learn the task, their performance in actively avoiding the unpleasant sounds was about the same as those with milder symptoms.
This suggests that depression may not affect the ability to avoid unpleasant events in general but specifically slows down the process of learning how to do so in the first place.
According to Tomm, many questions remain unanswered. For example, it is not yet clear how depressive symptoms influence avoidance when people continue practicing after becoming proficient, or in more complex real-world situations where the best strategy to avoid something unpleasant is uncertain.
The findings highlight an important but often overlooked aspect of depression. While much research has focused on how the condition alters motivation to pursue rewards, this study points to a related but distinct problem: difficulties in learning how to protect oneself from negative experiences.
Understanding this link could help refine therapies and interventions, particularly for those who struggle to manage stress or avoid harmful situations in daily life.
As research continues, the hope is that uncovering how depression shapes avoidance learning will lead to better support for people living with the condition, offering new strategies to cope with the challenges it brings.
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