Depression is often described as a disorder of mood, yet many people who experience it report a deeper struggle: they cannot trust their own self-beliefs. Feelings of worthlessness, all-or-nothing judgments, or an inability to decide what is true about oneself are common. While these patterns are well documented in clinical descriptions, far less is known about how the brain processes self-evaluation during depression. A new study published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience offers a detailed look at how these disruptions emerge in both behavior and neural activity.
Researchers examined 117 adults with varying levels of depressive symptoms, from none to severe. Participants completed an fMRI task in which they evaluated statements either about themselves or about famous public figures. For each phrase, they rated how strongly they believed it, moving along a scale rather than making a simple yes-or-no decision. The researchers predicted that individuals with higher depression severity would show more extreme, all-or-nothing responding and slower reaction times, alongside differences in brain regions involved in self-reflection.
Instead, the data showed a more nuanced picture. Rather than becoming more rigid, adults with higher depression scores tended toward increased ambivalence. They were less likely to choose the far ends of the scale and more likely to select responses in the middle. In other words, their self-evaluations were not characterized by firm, categorical beliefs but by uncertainty. This shift toward ambivalence was strongest during self-focused judgments compared with judgments about others.
Reaction time data added a second dimension. When participants confronted statements that did not evoke ambivalence - those they clearly believed or clearly rejected - individuals with more severe depressive symptoms took longer to respond. This slowing was specific to low-ambivalence situations, suggesting that when someone with depression knows what they think, the act of committing to that belief is more effortful. The process of deciding appears to be hindered even when the content itself feels straightforward.
The study also mapped these behavioral patterns onto neural activity. During low-ambivalence self-evaluation, adults with higher depression severity showed reduced activation in three interconnected cortical regions: the medial prefrontal cortex, the superior frontal cortex, and the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC). These areas have been repeatedly associated with self-referential thinking, emotional evaluation, and the integration of personal meaning. Their reduced engagement suggests that the brain may have more difficulty synthesizing clear, stable self-beliefs during depression.
The pgACC showed an additional, distinct response. During high-ambivalence trials - where participants were uncertain about the truth of the statements - individuals with greater depression severity displayed increased activation in this region when evaluating themselves compared with evaluating famous people. This pattern indicates that the pgACC becomes more active when the self feels unclear, conflicted, or difficult to define, a state that aligns with many clinical descriptions of depression. Rather than signaling emotional clarity or relief, the region becomes involved when uncertainty about the self intensifies.
Altogether, the findings describe a system in which self-evaluation becomes slower, less decisive, and neurally altered. Instead of simply endorsing negative beliefs about oneself, individuals with depression may experience a more fundamental disruption in how the brain organizes self-related information. This aligns with long-standing psychological theories suggesting that depression affects not only mood but also the structure of self-knowledge.
The researchers note that these insights may help guide future treatments, particularly those that target distorted self-beliefs. Cognitive-based therapies often focus on challenging rigid or overly negative assumptions. Yet the present findings indicate that ambivalence - not rigidity - may be a more central feature for some individuals. Interventions that strengthen confidence in healthy self-definitions, or that support decision-making in self-evaluation, may match the neural profile revealed in this study more closely than approaches oriented toward dismantling extreme beliefs.
The study also underscores that the brain does not treat self-related information the same way it treats information about others. The specific activation patterns observed during self-evaluation suggest a unique network that becomes vulnerable in depression. When this network is less engaged, certainty about personal truths may be harder to access. When it becomes overactive, as with the pgACC during high ambivalence, the sense of confusion about the self may intensify.
From a broader scientific perspective, the work contributes to a growing understanding of how cognitive processes take shape at the neural level during mood disorders. Depression has long been studied through the lens of emotional processing, reward circuitry, and stress systems. This study broadens the focus by showing that even a basic cognitive task - deciding what one believes about oneself - relies on a complex interplay of attention, emotion, and self-representation that is altered in measurable ways.
Through the lens of Seven Reflections' Dimensional Systems Architecture (DSA), these findings can be interpreted as a disruption in the structural stability of the self-evaluation field. In DSA terms, judgment about the self emerges from a coherent interaction between cognitive layers; ambivalence reflects a reduction in field coherence, where competing interpretations occupy the same cognitive space without stabilizing into a dominant configuration. The slower reaction times and altered pgACC activity suggest that the system requires more energy to resolve internal conflict, indicating reduced efficiency rather than a flaw in content. Depression, in this framing, reflects not simply negative beliefs but a temporary collapse of structural clarity.
This perspective highlights why interventions that restore cognitive stability - not only those aimed at emotional relief - may be effective. Clearer internal structure allows the system to settle more quickly into coherent self-evaluations, reducing the overwhelming sense of uncertainty that many people with depression describe.
The study does not claim causation and does not attempt to diagnose individuals based on brain activity. Instead, it offers a careful, data-driven view of how self-evaluation functions differently in depression, providing a subtle and informative picture of the cognitive architecture involved.
