ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Syst. Neurosci.
Event-Related Potentials and Executive Control Deficits in Major Depression: Evidence from the Attention Network Test
Provisionally accepted
Almira M Kustubayeva1*
Manzura Zholdassovaa1Altyngul Kamzanova1Zabira Madaliyeva1Aigul Suleimenova2Sultangali Nessipbayev3Gulnur Borbassova1Diana Arman4Erik Nelson5
Gerald Matthews6- 1Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
- 2Republican Scientific and Practical Center of Mental Health, Almaty, Kazakhstan
- 3Medical clinic Keruen-Medicus, almaty, Kazakhstan
- 4Kazakh-British Technical University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
- 5University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, United States
- 6George Mason University Department of Psychology, Fairfax, United States
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Objective Behavioral and neurological studies suggest that major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with pervasive deficits in executive control of attention. Research using Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to investigate attentional impairments in depression has provided mixed results. The current study aimed to clarify abnormalities in ERPs associated with depression through use of the Attention Network Test (ANT) which assesses efficiency of three fundamental brain networks: executive control, alerting, and orienting. Method Participants were 93 volunteers. We compared ERP amplitudes in healthy, subsyndromal depression, and MDD groups (31 participants per group) during performance of an extended-duration version of the ANT. Results Both N100 and P300 ERP amplitudes were generally lower in the MDD group across central-parietal and posterior sites, with medium-to-large effect sizes. There were also significant effects of depression on the ANT indices for executive control and alerting. Further analyses showed that some abnormalities in ERPs were seen in the subsyndromal group and that depression effects were stable across time, despite vigilance decrement. Conclusions Neurocognitive deficits in depression may relate to depletion of a general attentional resource. Significance Findings contribute to the identification of clinically useful biomarkers for depression.
Keywords: Alerting, Attention Network Test, biomarkers, Event-related potentials, executive control, Major Depressive Disorder
Received: 27 Jul 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kustubayeva, Zholdassovaa, Kamzanova, Madaliyeva, Suleimenova, Nessipbayev, Borbassova, Arman, Nelson and Matthews. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Almira M Kustubayeva
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