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

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Anxiety Disorders and Symptoms; Social Anxiety Disorder

• Registration Number: NCT03437317
• Lead Sponsor: Florida State University

Brief Summary

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.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2014-11-01
• Primary Completion: 2016-12-15
• Study Completion: 2016-12-15
• Status Verified: 2018-02
• Study First Submitted: 2018-02-06
• Study First Submitted QC: 2018-02-12
• Last Update Submitted: 2018-02-12
• Study First Posted: 2018-02-19
• Last Update Posted: 2018-02-19

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 154

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

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Behavioral Evidence for Categorical Perception Changes	Baseline to Study Completion (14 to 28 Days)	Participants will be asked to respond if they detected anger in faces varying in their levels of anger expression. This task is used to determine a perceptual bias for threat/anger in faces that is related to increases in social anxiety symptoms, and assess for improvements in the categorization of angry vs. neutral faces. that align with modulations of neural responses (MEG and EEG evidence) indexing perceptual processing of the faces following perceptual retraining.
Neural Evidence for Categorical Perception Changes	Baseline to Study Completion (14 to 28 Days)	Neural activity will be recorded using EEG and MEG to measure neural processes underpinning categorical perception of anger in faces. Changes in this neural perceptual index will be assessed following perceptual retraining to provide a neural mechanism underpinning behavioral improvements in perceptual categorization and subsequent reductions in anxiety.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Social Anxiety Symptoms - Social Phobia Scale	Baseline to Study Completion (14 to 28 Days)	Change in social anxiety symptomatology through perceptual retraining
Social Anxiety Symptoms - Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale	Baseline to Study Completion (14 to 28 Days)	Change in social anxiety symptomatology through perceptual retraining