Browsing by Subject "Depression, Mental"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    A Neurophysiological Examination of Individual Differences in Emotion Regulation through Investigations of the Late Positive Potential
    (2024) Ng, Erin; Compton, Rebecca J. (Rebecca Jean)
    This study investigated the influence of individual differences in negative affect on emotion regulation strategy. N=39 undergraduates viewed a series of angry and neutral faces and then reappraised or attended to angry faces while EEG was recorded. Participants also completed the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 questionnaires to measure negative affect. The late positive potential (LPP), a measure of emotional reactivity, was used to examine differences in emotion regulation. Emotion regulation strategy had an effect on neural responses to emotional stimuli as LPP responses were elevated when participants reappraised negative stimuli compared to passively viewing them which contradicted self-report data of subjective emotional experience. Depression, but not anxiety, was found to affect LPP responses to reappraising and attending to angry faces. Additionally, depression and anxiety had similar effects regarding the location of LPP responses, with higher LPP responses to angry faces occurring in the parietal region of the left hemisphere. Overall, this study exhibits the neural differences and similarities between depression and anxiety in emotional response and employment of emotion regulation strategies and provides important information regarding the representation of the LPP as a neural measurement.
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    Can Positive Partner Illusions Help? Differential Considerations across Varying Levels of Social Anxiety and Depression
    (2018) Rette, Danielle N.; Gordon, Elizabeth
    Conflicting evidence has found that Positive Partner Illusions (PPIs) can be both beneficial and detrimental to relationship functioning and individual growth. The benefits of PPIs in some cases have been found to improve symptoms of depression and social anxiety. We hypothesized that individuals with social anxiety would experience a greater reduction in symptoms when receiving higher PPIs compared to individuals with depression. We also hypothesized that greater overlapping schemas (Inclusion of Other in Self; IOS) and lower discrepancies between how an individual’s partner sees them and how they see themselves (discrepancy scores; DS) would predict greater reductions in social anxiety and depression symptoms. A cross-sectional (Study 1) and longitudinal (Study 2) study were conducted to analyze these hypotheses. Both Study 1 (N = 296 couples) and Study 2 (N = 80) utilized self-report measures to analyze the actor’s depression, social anxiety, social comparison self-ratings, IOS (a scale that measures how close one feels to their partner), relationship quality, and the partner’s social comparison ratings of the actor. As expected, PPI’s were associated with increases in social comparison self-rating scores in the cross-sectional study. However, PPIs were negatively correlated with depression and social anxiety in both studies, as well as with social comparison self-ratings over time. Moreover, our cross-sectional study found that there is not a significant difference between the benefits that socially anxious individuals and depressed individuals received from PPIs.
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    Comorbidities among Four Major Clinical Disorders
    (2016) Himelstein, Robyn; Wang, Shu-wen
    The current investigation provides a substantive overview of the epidemiology and etiological models of four comorbidities involving substance use disorders, depression, and schizophrenia. I first describe the symptoms and prevalence rates of depression and schizophrenia and the incidence of smoking and alcohol use. I then discuss the comorbidities of depression and smoking, depression and alcohol, schizophrenia and smoking, and schizophrenia and alcohol. I subsequently describe the effect of the comorbidities on the prognosis of depression and schizophrenia and treatment difficulties regarding these combined disorders. I close by offering implications and recommendations for treatment and prevention of the four comorbidities.
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    Does Attentional Control Depend on Depression Symptom Severity?
    (2019) Sheen, Elisa; Compton, Rebecca J. (Rebecca Jean)
    The present study aims to examine the effects of cognitive reappraisal and attentional control training across a spectrum of depression symptom severity. The literature has explored the efficacy of cognitive reappraisal and attentional training methods; however, no studies have compared the two emotion regulation strategies while also examining efficacy across a range of depression symptom severity. Results indicate that attentional control training led to less attention towards negative aspects of images and cognitive reappraisal had greater impact on lowering negative image ratings. The effects of training did not depend on depression level.
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    Tamoxifen Influences on Behavior and Mood in Female Rats
    (2020) Roth, Grayson; Kelly, Mary Ellen
    Tamoxifen is a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) used in the treatment of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer in pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of long-term tamoxifen treatment on anxiety and depressive behaviors in female rats. Female rats were randomly assigned to receive tamoxifen treatment through medicated food pellets or unmedicated normal rat chow for 10-13 weeks. It was hypothesized that tamoxifen rats would exhibit increased anxiety and depressive behaviors in the elevated plus maze and open field test as a result of the decrease in estrogen activity in the brain because of tamoxifen treatment. Increased anxiety behavior in the elevated plus maze would be associated with increased time spent in the enclosed arms of the maze and increased entries into the enclosed arms versus the open arms. In the open field test increased anxiety behavior would be associated with a lower number of central crossings of the open field and increased time spent on the outer parts of the open field near the walls and corners. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the behavioral data from the study was unavailable for analysis at this time. Analysis of trends in weight data for rats in the study found that tamoxifen treatment was significantly associated with differences in weight change compared to control rats during the study. Tamoxifen treatment was associated with an initial decrease in body weight and a lower overall end weight relative to control rats. Future studies should continue the work of this study by analyzing the behavioral data of this study and designing other experiments to also examine cognitive effects associated with long-term tamoxifen treatment. Future immunocytochemistry analysis of hippocampal circuitry is also important in understanding the behavioral and cognitive effects of long-term tamoxifen treatment.