Innovative Attention Training to Achieve Stable Remission in Depression

Principal investigator: Associate Professor Ernst Koster

Research award: PsyImpact

Funding Period: 2016-2017

Can new techniques to train attention stop depression from coming back?

Research has already shown the links between attention and depression. When attention is more easily drawn towards negative information this can cause negative mood, make it harder to control emotions and increase reactions to stress.

The project

Ernst Koster and his team at Ghent University are building on this knowledge and exploring new ways to train attention of people who’ve experienced depression.

The RedirecD project aims to test and implement a gaze-contingent attention training that, based on online assessment and feedback, trains specific attentional impairments underlying depressive symptomatology and its recurrence. Ultimately, RedirecD provides a tool to consolidate stable remission and prevent new depressive episodes, that can be disseminated online.

The team at Ghent University

The process

This project is the latest in a series of studies by Ernst and his team based on eye-tracking techniques. Participants watch scrambled sentences on a screen (“life my is hell a party”) and need to unscramble these as fast as possible while the amount of time they spend looking at the negative and positive words is recorded.

In this study, participants with experience of depression will see a series of positive and negative sentences related to their own emotions. They are encouraged to generate positive sentences and see instant feedback whether they focus on the right information (positive words) to do so.

In a previous test, participants focused more on the positive words as a result of this feedback – and people’s ability to manage their emotions improved.

Now the team want to see if this eye-tracking technology can have a similar effect on people with mental health problems – improving attention and decreasing the symptoms of depression.

The potential

Ernst’s work will build knowledge of how effective eye-tracking techniques can be as a part of a therapeutic response to depression.

And because this project also involves developing and testing an online version of the technique – with the mouse cursor used instead of an eye-tracking camera – it has the potential in the future to eventually help fight depression anywhere people can connect to the internet.

The outcome

In order to be able to reach a large number of participants the team developed the existing gaze-based attention training into a mouse/cursor-based version (hereafter called Mouse-contingent Attention Training; MCAT) which can be performed on any computer, which allowed greater flexibility for research and has major advances for dissemination.

The team also performed an experiment comparing the gaze-based vs. the mouse based version of the attention training and found that results were highly convergent. The team are continuing to examine if MCAT is suitable to be disseminated in a population who have remitted from depression and we are currently examining whether this training can protect against novel episodes.

Ernst gave a TED talk about his work and rumination for the University of Flanders. (Please note this talk is in Dutch.)

Papers published:

Eye-gaze contingent attention training (ECAT): Examining the causal role of attention regulation in reappraisal and rumination.

A novel process-based approach to improve resilience: Effects of computerized mouse-based (gaze) contingent attention training (MCAT) on reappraisal and rumination.

The impact

This project has been crucial in the development of the procedures of attention training (using a mouse-based procedure). This is a critical step as this allows more research on multiple sessions of training.

The team are now in the process of developing a smartphone version of the mouse-based training procedure, and are planning more large-scale research on the basis of this MQ funded project.

Associate Professor Ernst Koster

Ernst Koster is Associate Professor at the University of Ghent in Belgium. He specialises in understanding how cognitive processes affect anxiety and depression.