Attention bias modification (ABM) is a newly emerging therapy for anxiety disorders that is rooted in current cognitive models of anxiety and in established experimental data on threat‐related ...attentional biases in anxiety. This review describes the evidence indicating that ABM has the potential to become an enhancing tool for current psychological and pharmacological treatments for anxiety or even a novel standalone treatment. The review also outlines the gaps in need of bridging before ABM techniques could be routinely applied and incorporated into standard treatment protocols.
Behavioral studies show that attention training can alter threat bias, influence vulnerability to stress and reduce clinical anxiety symptoms. The aim of this study was to examine which cognitive ...functions of attention processing are modulated by attention training, and how a priori anxiety interacts with the attention training procedure. Specifically, we expected modulation in the P1/N1 event-related potential (ERP) complex if early spatial attention was to be affected by training and modulation in later ERP components (P2, N2, P3) had training affected top-down attentional processes.
Thirty anxious and 30 non-anxious adults performed a modified probe detection task. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) were recorded throughout for later ERP analyses. Half the participants in each anxiety group were randomly assigned to undergo a training procedure designed to divert their attention away from threat and the other half received placebo training.
Anxious participants who were trained to avoid threat showed a linear reduction in response time (RT) to targets replacing neutral faces with the progression of training. This change in RT was not observed among non-anxious participants or among anxious participants who were exposed to placebo training. Following training, the anxious participants who were trained to avoid threat showed a reduction in P2 and P3 mean amplitudes and an enhancement in N2 mean amplitude.
Attention training affects anxious participants whereas non-anxious participants seem not to respond to it. The ERP data suggest that attention training modulates top-down processes of attention control rather than processes of early attention orienting.
Background: Threat‐related attention biases have been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders. As a result, attention bias modification (ABM) protocols have been employed as ...treatments for anxious adults. However, they have yet to emerge for children. A randomized, double‐blind placebo‐controlled trial was conducted to examine the efficacy of an ABM protocol designed to facilitate attention disengagement from threats, thereby reducing anxiety and stress vulnerability in children.
Methods: Participants were 34 chronically high‐anxious 10‐year‐olds. An emotional attention spatial cueing task was used. In the ABM condition (n = 18), threat faces never cued the targets’ locations, such that the valid–invalid ratio was 0%/100%, respectively. The valid–invalid ratio on neutral cue trials was 25%/75%, respectively. In the control condition, the valid–invalid ratio was 25%/75% for both neutral and threat faces. Anxiety and depression were measured pre‐ and post‐training and pre‐ and post‐stress induction.
Results: ABM facilitated attention disengagement from threat. In response to the stressor task, children in the ABM condition reported less state anxiety relative to controls.
Conclusion: Computerized attention training procedures may be beneficial for reducing stress vulnerability in anxious children.
Background
Attention bias modification treatment (ABMT) is a novel treatment for anxiety disorders. Although a number of other meta‐analytic reviews exist, the purpose of the present meta‐analysis is ...to examine issues unaddressed in prior reviews. Specifically, the review estimates the efficacy of ABMT in clinically anxious patients and examines the effect of delivery context (clinic vs. home) on symptom reduction.
Methods
A literature search using PsychInfo and Web of Science databases was performed. Only randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examining dot‐probe‐based ABMT in clinically diagnosed anxious patients were included. From 714 articles located through the search, 36 ABMT studies were identified and 11 studies met inclusion criteria (N = 589 patients).
Results
ABMT was associated with greater clinician‐rated reductions in anxiety symptoms relative to control training: between‐groups effect (d = 0.42, P = .001, confidence interval (CI) = 0.18–0.66), contrast of within‐group effects (Q = 7.25, P < .01). More patients in the treatment group no longer met formal diagnostic criteria for their anxiety disorder posttreatment relative to patients in the control condition (P < .05). Analyses of patients’ self‐reported anxiety were nonsignificant for the between‐groups contrast (P = .35), and were at a trend level of significance for the contrast between the within‐group effects (P = .06). Moderation analysis of the between‐groups effect revealed a significant effect for ABMT delivered in the clinic (d = 0.34, P = 0.01, CI = 0.07–0.62), and a nonsignificant effect for ABMT delivered at home (d = −0.10, P = 0.40, CI = −0.33–0.13).
Conclusions
The current meta‐analysis provides support for ABMT as a novel evidenced‐based treatment for anxiety disorders. Overall, ABMT effects are mainly evident when it is delivered in the clinic and when clinical outcome is evaluated by a clinician. More RCTs of ABMT in specific anxiety disorders are warranted.
Abstract Background Identification of reliable targets for therapeutic interventions is essential for developing evidence-based therapies. Threat-related attention bias has been implicated in the ...etiology and maintenance of social anxiety disorder. Extant response-time-based threat bias measures have demonstrated limited reliability and internal consistency. Here, we examined gaze patterns of socially anxious and nonanxious participants in relation to social threatening and neutral stimuli using an eye-tracking task, comprised of multiple threat and neutral stimuli, presented for an extended time-period. We tested the psychometric properties of this task with the hope to provide a solid stepping-stone for future treatment development. Methods Eye gaze was tracked while participants freely viewed 60 different matrices comprised of eight disgusted and eight neutral facial expressions, presented for 6000 ms each. Gaze patterns on threat and neutral areas of interest (AOIs) of participants with SAD, high socially anxious students and nonanxious students were compared. Internal consistency and test–retest reliability were evaluated. Results Participants did not differ on first-fixation variables. However, overall, socially anxious students and participants with SAD dwelled significantly longer on threat faces compared with nonanxious participants, with no difference between the anxious groups. Groups did not differ in overall dwell time on neutral faces. Internal consistency of total dwell time on threat and neutral AOIs was high and one-week test–retest reliability was acceptable. Limitations Only disgusted facial expressions were used. Relative small sample size. Conclusion Social anxiety is associated with increased dwell time on socially threatening stimuli, presenting a potential target for therapeutic intervention.
It was recently suggested that ibuprofen might increase the risk for severe and fatal coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and should therefore be avoided in this patient population. We aimed to ...evaluate whether ibuprofen use in individuals with COVID-19 was associated with more severe disease, compared with individuals using paracetamol or no antipyretics.
In a retrospective cohort study of patients with COVID-19 from Shamir Medical Centre, Israel, we monitored any use of ibuprofen from a week before diagnosis of COVID-19 throughout the disease. Primary outcomes were mortality and the need for respiratory support, including oxygen administration and mechanical ventilation.
The study included 403 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with a median age of 45 years. Of the entire cohort, 44 patients (11%) needed respiratory support and 12 (3%) died. One hundred and seventy-nine (44%) patients had fever, with 32% using paracetamol and 22% using ibuprofen, for symptom-relief. In the ibuprofen group, 3 (3.4%) patients died, whereas in the non-ibuprofen group, 9 (2.8%) patients died (p 0.95). Nine (10.3%) patients from the ibuprofen group needed respiratory support, compared with 35 (11%) from the non-ibuprofen group (p 1). When compared with exclusive paracetamol users, no differences were observed in mortality rates or the need for respiratory support among patients using ibuprofen.
In this cohort of COVID-19 patients, ibuprofen use was not associated with worse clinical outcomes, compared with paracetamol or no antipyretic.
Background
Heightened attention allocation toward negative‐valanced information and reduced attention allocation toward positive‐valanced information represent viable targets for attention bias ...modification in major depressive disorder. Accordingly, we conducted a randomized controlled trial testing the efficacy of a novel gaze‐contingent attention bias modification procedure for major depressive disorder.
Method
Sixty patients with major depressive disorder were randomly assigned to either eight training sessions of feedback‐based gaze‐contingent music reward therapy designed to divert patients’ gaze toward positive over sad stimuli, or to a control condition which entailed eight sessions of gaze‐noncontingent music. Clinician‐rated and self‐reported measures of depression, and proportion of dwell‐time on sad faces, were assessed pretreatment, posttreatment, and at a 3‐month follow‐up.
Results
Gaze‐contingent music reward therapy produced a greater reduction in dwell‐time on sad faces compared with the control condition, but it failed to generalize to novel faces. Both groups manifested similarly significant reductions in depression symptoms from pre‐ to posttreatment that were maintained at follow‐up. Exploratory analyses suggest that first‐episode patients may benefit more from this therapy than patients with a history of multiple episodes.
Conclusions
Gaze‐contingent music reward therapy can modify attention biases in depression, but clear differential clinical effects did not emerge. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
We develop a method to recover a gene network's structure from co-expression data, measured in terms of normalized Pearson's correlation coefficients between gene pairs. We treat these co-expression ...measurements as weights in the complete graph in which nodes correspond to genes. To decide which edges exist in the gene network, we fit a three-component mixture model such that the observed weights of 'null edges' follow a normal distribution with mean 0, and the non-null edges follow a mixture of two lognormal distributions, one for positively- and one for negatively-correlated pairs. We show that this so-called L2 N mixture model outperforms other methods in terms of power to detect edges, and it allows to control the false discovery rate. Importantly, our method makes no assumptions about the true network structure. We demonstrate our method, which is implemented in an R package called edgefinder, using a large dataset consisting of expression values of 12,750 genes obtained from 1,616 women. We infer the gene network structure by cancer subtype, and find insightful subtype characteristics. For example, we find thirteen pathways which are enriched in each of the cancer groups but not in the Normal group, with two of the pathways associated with autoimmune diseases and two other with graft rejection. We also find specific characteristics of different breast cancer subtypes. For example, the Luminal A network includes a single, highly connected cluster of genes, which is enriched in the human diseases category, and in the Her2 subtype network we find a distinct, and highly interconnected cluster which is uniquely enriched in drug metabolism pathways.
This paper examines the distinct effects of linguistics distance and language literacy on the labor market integration of migrant men and women. Using data from the Programme for International ...Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 2018 in 16 countries of destination mainly from Europe and more than 110 languages of origin, we assess migrant labor force participation, employment, working hours, and occupational prestige. The study finds that linguistics distance of the first language studied has a significant negative association with labor force participation, employment, and working hours of migrant women, even after controlling for their abilities in their destination language, education, and cultural distance between the country of origin and destination. In contrast, linguistics distance is only negatively associated with migrant men's working hours. This suggests that linguistic distance serves as a proxy for cultural aspects, which are not captured by cultural distance and hence shape the labor market integration of migrant women due to cultural factors rather than human capital. We suggest that the gender aspect of the effect of language proximity is essential in understanding the intersectional position of migrant women in the labor force.
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to extensive social distancing measures. For those suffering from social anxiety, social distancing coincides with a tendency to avoid social interactions. We ...used this natural experiment imposed by a COVID-19 lockdown to examine how mandated low social exposure influenced socially anxious university students, and compared their anxiety to that of socially anxious students in preceding academic years with no social distancing.
Methods
Ninety-nine socially anxious students were assessed for social anxiety symptoms at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters. Students from the 2019–2020 academic year (which included a lockdown followed by social distancing measures at the end of the fall semester) were compared to students from preceding years (2016–2019) on social anxiety levels.
Results
Whereas social anxiety decreased in socially anxious students from the fall to the spring semester in the years preceding the pandemic, during the 2019–2020 academic year social anxiety levels remained high and unchanged. These results held when controlling for depressive symptoms and when analyzing social anxiety items that cannot be confounded with COVID-19-related anxiety.
Conclusions
The current results suggest that reduced exposure to social situations may play a role in the maintenance of social anxiety. Alternative explanations are discussed.
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