Post-stroke depression has been recognized as a common sequela of stroke, with increasing morbidity and mortality. Approximately more than half of stroke patients suffer from post-stroke depression, which leads to severe functional impairment. It is a common complication of stroke and severely affects the recovery of psychological, language and cognitive functions of patients. In addition, there is a high incidence of post-stroke cognitive impairment, which typically manifests as impairments in language, attention, comprehension, computation and memory and worsens as the patient ages. It has been noted that 31% of patients suffer from depression in the 5 years following stroke. Lesion site has been extensively studied as a risk factor for post-stroke depression. The incidence of cognitive impairment is essentially the same in patients with different types of cerebral infarction. Although many studies have focused on the association between the presence or absence of post-stroke depression and stroke lesion location, the clinical association remains unclear. Preliminary studies have shown that stroke patients with major depression have significantly lower cognitive impairment scores compared with patients without depression. There appears to be a common pathophysiological mechanism between cognitive impairment and cerebrovascular disease. In addition, stroke itself increases the risk of future cognitive impairment. Stroke increases the incidence and mortality of post-stroke depression and cognitive impairment, which has become a common acute condition in hospital neurology departments. It has been shown that greater damage to areas of the limbic-striato-striatal bulb-thalamic circuit is associated with a higher incidence of depression, and in addition, depression is associated with greater damage to areas of the medial prefrontal cortex, and patients with anterior circulation infarction have higher levels of depression and more severe cognitive impairment. Thus, depression may be associated with cognitive impairment in patients with cerebral infarction.