Journal Article

Emotional recognition training modifies neural response to emotional faces but does not improve mood in healthy volunteers with high levels of depressive symptoms

Fluharty, Meg, Dalili, Michael, Button, Katherine S., Harmer, Catherine J., Adams, Sally, Browning, Michael, Munafò, Marcus R., Penton-Voak, Ian S., Holmes, Emily A.

2021

Overview

There is demand for new, effective and scalable treatments for depression, and development of new forms of cognitive bias modification (CBM) of negative emotional processing biases has been suggested as possible interventions to meet this need. We report two double blind RCTs, in which volunteers with high levels of depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory ii (BDI-ii) > 14) completed a brief course of emotion recognition training (a novel form of CBM using faces) or sham training. In Study 1 (N = 36), participants completed a post-training emotion recognition task whilst undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate neural correlates of CBM. In Study 2 (N = 190), measures of mood were assessed post-training, and at 2-week and 6-week follow-up. In both studies, CBM resulted in an initial change in emotion recognition bias, which (in Study 2) persisted for 6 weeks after the end of training. In Study 1, CBM resulted in increases neural activation to happy faces, with this effect driven by an increase in neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and bilateral amygdala. In Study 2, CBM did not lead to a reduction in depressive symptoms on the BDI-ii, or on related measures of mood, motivation and persistence, or depressive interpretation bias at either 2 or 6-week follow-ups. CBM of emotion recognition has effects on neural activity that are similar in some respects to those induced by Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) administration (Study 1), but we find no evidence that this had any later effect on self-reported mood in an analogue sample of non-clinical volunteers with low mood (Study 2).

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Acknowledgment / Adolescent / Adult / Affect - physiology / Amygdala / Amygdala - physiopathology / Antidepressants / Attentional Bias / Bias / Bipolar disorder / Cognitive ability / Cognitive bias / cognitive bias modification / Cortex / depression / Depression - physiopathology / Double-Blind Method / Emotion recognition / Emotional intelligence / Emotions / Emotions - physiology / Facial Expression / Facial expressions / Facial Recognition - physiology / Female / Functional magnetic resonance imaging / Happiness / Healthy Volunteers / Humans / Information processing / interpretative bias / low mood / Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Male / Measures / Mental depression / Mood / Motivation / Neuroimaging / Original Article / Prefrontal cortex / Recognition / Recognition, Psychology - physiology / Serotonin reuptake inhibitors / Serotonin uptake inhibitors / Training / Treatment methods / Volunteers / Young Adult