Does Depression Impact Our Memory for Rewarding Experiences

NCT05276583 | Unknown

• 1 other identifier: DMEMxp
• Study Type: observational
• Target: 400
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

When individuals experience depression, they may find that their brain does not work in the same way that they are used to. For example, sometimes the ability to remember things that happened during the day is not so good. This might specifically impact positive memories, for example remembering having fun at the ice cream shop with some friends. This is because when individuals are depressed they sometimes can not remember positive experiences as our brains do not have the chemicals needed to store those memories. In this experiment the investigators want to see if the ability to remember positive information is negatively impacted by depression. To do so, participants will look at some images that are related to winning high vs. low rewards. Next they are tested on their memory for those images. Participants will also be asked some questions about themselves and their mental health. The investigators expect that those who are experiencing depression will be less able to remember images related to higher rewards compared to those who are not experiencing depression.

Conditions

Depression

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Discriminability, d'

  Discriminability refers to the ability of a participant to distinguish between targets, i.e., images that were presented to them, and lures, i.e., images that were not shown to them. This is calculated using the following formula: z("hit rate" )-z("false alarm rate") and will be calculated for each reward category.

  immediately after the procedure

Secondary Outcomes (3)

• Hit Rate

  immediately after the procedure

• False Alarm Rate

  immediately after the procedure

• Criterion, C

  immediately after the procedure

Other Outcomes (6)

• Becks Depression Inventory BDI

  Assessed at the beginning of the experiment once

• Generalised Anxiety Disorder - 7 GAD

  Assessed during the first part of the experiment after the BDI.

• Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS)

  Assessed during the first part of the experiment after the GAD.

Study Arms (2)

Patients with depression like symptoms

Participants in this condition must indicate that they are currently suffering from a mental health illness and score at least 20 on the Becks Depression Inventory. These participants will undergo the motivate learning task and will study images associated with high and low rewards. After 24-hours participants will be tested on their memory for those images.

Behavioral: Motivated Learning Task

Healthy controls without depression like symptoms

Participants in this condition must indicate that they do not currently suffer from a mental health condition and score less than 20 on the Becks depression inventory. These participants will also undergo the motivate learning task and will study images associated with high and low rewards. After 24-hours participants will be tested on their memory for those images.

Behavioral: Motivated Learning Task

Interventions

Motivated Learning Task BEHAVIORAL

The Motivated Learning Task is split into two parts, the learning phase, and the test phase. During the learning phase participants are presented with 72 landscape images (targets) which they must memorise. Each image which participants are shown is associated with a reward amount. During the test phase participants are shown the 72 images they saw during the learning phase, known as targets, intermixed with 72 new images they did not see during the learning phase, known as lures. Participants must decide whether the image is "old" (i.e., they saw it during the learning phase) or "new" (i.e. they did not see it during the learning phase). After they have made their old/new decision, participants rate their confidence in their decision on a 3-point scale (i.e., guess, sure, very sure).

Healthy controls without depression like symptoms; Patients with depression like symptoms

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 20 Years - 45 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64)
• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

All participants will be recruited online using the online work-sourcing platform Prolific (www.prolific.com). Prolific has access to participant populations who are considered healthy and those who are suffering from mental health conditions. However the website is unable to determine whether participants have depressive symptoms or not, therefore the BDI will be administered to divide participants into healthy controls and those with depressive symptoms as described previously.

You may qualify if:

• Prolific approval rating of at least 95% and have participated in at least 10 studies on Prolific.
• Country of residence: United Kingdom
• Aged between 20-45
• Education level: At least A-levels or equivalent
• Participants must use a computer or laptop to participate.
• Participants must not have participated in the study conducted to validate the images used in this experiment and in the experiment from our previous preregistrations.
• Participants must not have participated in the previous studies which used the stimuli for this task.

You may not qualify if:

• Participants who incorrectly answer the practice trials and/or the questions of either the learning or test phases of the Motivated Learning Task. (For every question, they can try twice. Only if they get it wrong twice for a given practice phase/question they are excluded.)
• Participants with reaction times below 150ms in more than 20 % of the flanker task and/or the PVT. (These are considered implausibly fast reaction times that indicate that participants did not participate in the task the way it is intended, e.g., random key presses or clicking)
• who have 20% or more lapses (reaction times above 1000 ms) on the PVT.
• Participants who incorrectly respond on \> 50% of the flanker task, indicating they did not pay attention to the task.
• Participants with a d' of 0 and below, indicating chance or worse than chance performance.
• Participants who do not complete both parts of the experiment.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim: lead
• German Research Foundation: collaborator

Study Sites (1)

Central Institute of Mental Health

Mannheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, 68159, Germany

Location

Related Publications (12)

• Adcock RA, Thangavel A, Whitfield-Gabrieli S, Knutson B, Gabrieli JD. Reward-motivated learning: mesolimbic activation precedes memory formation. Neuron. 2006 May 4;50(3):507-17. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2006.03.036.

  PMID: 16675403 BACKGROUND

• Hoddes E, Zarcone V, Smythe H, Phillips R, Dement WC. Quantification of sleepiness: a new approach. Psychophysiology. 1973 Jul;10(4):431-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1973.tb00801.x. No abstract available.

  PMID: 4719486 BACKGROUND

• Roach GD, Dawson D, Lamond N. Can a shorter psychomotor vigilance task be used as a reasonable substitute for the ten-minute psychomotor vigilance task? Chronobiol Int. 2006;23(6):1379-87. doi: 10.1080/07420520601067931.

  PMID: 17190720 BACKGROUND

• Snaith P. Anhedonia: a neglected symptom of psychopathology. Psychol Med. 1993 Nov;23(4):957-66. doi: 10.1017/s0033291700026428.

  PMID: 8134519 BACKGROUND

• Spitzer RL, Kroenke K, Williams JB, Lowe B. A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: the GAD-7. Arch Intern Med. 2006 May 22;166(10):1092-7. doi: 10.1001/archinte.166.10.1092.

  PMID: 16717171 BACKGROUND

• Saunders JB, Aasland OG, Babor TF, de la Fuente JR, Grant M. Development of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT): WHO Collaborative Project on Early Detection of Persons with Harmful Alcohol Consumption--II. Addiction. 1993 Jun;88(6):791-804. doi: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1993.tb02093.x.

  PMID: 8329970 BACKGROUND

• Dillon DG, Dobbins IG, Pizzagalli DA. Weak reward source memory in depression reflects blunted activation of VTA/SN and parahippocampus. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2014 Oct;9(10):1576-83. doi: 10.1093/scan/nst155. Epub 2013 Sep 26.

  PMID: 24078019 BACKGROUND

• Button KS, Ioannidis JP, Mokrysz C, Nosek BA, Flint J, Robinson ES, Munafo MR. Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2013 May;14(5):365-76. doi: 10.1038/nrn3475. Epub 2013 Apr 10.

  PMID: 23571845 BACKGROUND

• Barr DJ, Levy R, Scheepers C, Tily HJ. Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. J Mem Lang. 2013 Apr;68(3):10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001.

  PMID: 24403724 BACKGROUND

• Bates D, Kliegl R, Vasishth S, Baayen H. Parsimonious mixed models. arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.04967. 2015.

  BACKGROUND

• Beck AT, Steer RA, Brown GK. Beck depression inventory (BDI-II). Pearson; 1996.

  BACKGROUND

• Heisig JP, Schaeffer M. Why you should always include a random slope for the lower-level variable involved in a cross-level interaction. European Sociological Review. 2019 ;35(2): 258-79.

  BACKGROUND

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Depression

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Behavioral Symptoms; Behavior

Study Officials

• David P Morgan, PhD

  Central Institute of Mental Health

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Central Study Contacts

David P Morgan, PhD

CONTACT

0621 1703; david.morgan@zi-mannheim.de

Study Design

• Study Type: observational
• Observational Model: CASE CONTROL
• Time Perspective: PROSPECTIVE
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: December 27, 2021
• First Posted: March 11, 2022
• Study Start: May 1, 2022
• Primary Completion: May 1, 2022
• Study Completion: May 1, 2022
• Last Updated: March 11, 2022

Record last verified: 2022-03

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: STUDY PROTOCOL, SAP, ANALYTIC CODE
• Time Frame: The data will become available as soon as the findings have been published.
• Access Criteria: Researchers will be able to access the data via the Open Science Framework if they have IRB or ethical approval to perform the proposed analyses. Those research must also sign a data use agreement to access the data.

Locations

DE (1)