Emotional Perceptual Training as a Treatment for Social Anxiety: Behavioral and Neural Evidence. (PTL)

Florida State University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Anxiety Disorders and Symptoms; Social Anxiety Disorder

Treatments: Behavioral: Gender Discrimination; Behavioral: Perceptual Retraining

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03437317

PTL-2017.21521

Details and patient eligibility

About

The Perceptual Training Study is a series of studies performed with the purpose of identifying a potential avenue for treatment of mood disorders, particularly anxiety-based mood disorders. The underlying theme is that neural representations may be threat-oriented, and may also be generalized to non-threatening cues by means of similarity to threatening representations. These may result in anxiety symptoms from innocuous cues. The idea behind the perceptual training is to create a divorce between the threat representations and cues which should be considered non-threatening, enhancing perceptual acuity and potentially reducing anxiety symptoms.

Enrollment: 154 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 35 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Right-handed
• Normal or corrected-to-normal vision

Exclusion criteria

• History of a diagnosed neurological or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - IV Axis I disorder
• Currently taking prescribed psychoactive drugs, including anti-depressants or anxiolytics.
• Having electrically, magnetically, or mechanically activated implants (e.g. cardiac pacemakers), due to incompatibility with MRI and MEG systems.
• Pregnancy or suspected pregnancy

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

---

154 participants in 5 patient groups

Active - MEG

Experimental group

Description:

Participants completed 1 session of 8 Perceptual Retraining blocks following an instructional presentation.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Perceptual Retraining

Control - MEG

Sham Comparator group

Description:

Participants completed 1 session of 8 blocks of Gender Discrimination Task.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Gender Discrimination

Active - 3 Behavior/EEG

Experimental group

Description:

Participants completed 3 sessions of Perceptual Retraining following an instructional presentation. The first session included 6 blocks of perceptual training, and the second session included 12 blocks of perceptual training. No perceptual training was performed in session 3. Sessions were spaced approximately 7 days apart, with a minimum of 3 days and a maximum of 14 days apart.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Perceptual Retraining

Active - 1 Behavior/MEG

Experimental group

Description:

Participants completed 1 session of 6 Perceptual Retraining blocks following an instructional presentation.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Perceptual Retraining

Control - 3 Behavior/MEG

Sham Comparator group

Description:

Participants completed 3 sessions of a Gender Discrimination Task. The first session included 6 blocks of gender discrimination task, and the second session included 12 blocks of the gender discrimination task. No gender discrimination task was performed in session 3. Sessions were spaced approximately 7 days apart, with a minimum of 3 days and a maximum of 14 days apart.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Gender Discrimination