An interventional study of Waiting room task in Depression and History of Suicide Attempt, sponsored by University Hospital, Montpellier. Terminated at 1 site in France. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 65 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2022-01-05.
Sponsored by University Hospital, Montpellier · Not applicable, Interventional, and Other
Social interactions are part of daily life. To decide to interact with someone or not is a routine for humans. To ensure the quality of interpersonal relationships, emotional cues must be taken into account to adapt optimally the investigator's behavior.
Difficulties in interpersonal relationships often trigger suicidal behavior. Suicide attempters are characterized by an impaired decision - making associated with difficulties in familial relationships.
To date, little data on emotional recognition and social decision- making in clinical population is available.
The study aims to compare behavioral response to negative social cues in 82 depressed patients according to their history of suicide attempt using a computerized neuropsychological task.
To identify the nature of the mechanisms involved in social decisions, Mennella and coll. have developed a computerized task (waiting room task) in which the participant is asked to avoid or to approach individuals expressing negative emotional expressions, in this case: anger or fear. In practice, participants have to choose between two chairs to sit in a waiting room in which subjects expressing a neutral face or negative emotions are present. To make this choice they must press a specific keyboard button. In addition to that, in order to evaluate motivation, some of the trials are reversed, meaning that the choice made by the participant will result in the opposite result.
Using this task they have shown that: (1) anger is associated with more avoidance behavior than fear, (2) this behavior is goal- directed and, (3) the higher the level of impulsivity of the subjects, the less able they are to adapt their responses.
The proposed study will use this neuropsychological assessment, the waiting room task, to evaluate if depressed patients would avoid or approach individuals expressing negative facial emotions. The main objective is to compare behavioral adaptation to anger vs neutral cues among depressed patients with and without history of suicide attempt.
The study also aims to :
The hypothesis is that depressed patients with a history of suicide attempt will exhibit anger specific hyper-responsiveness resulting in an increased avoidance behavior compared to subjects without suicidal history. It is expected that depressed suicide attempters will not have a different emotional reactivity compared to patients without suicidal history for another negative emotion, namely fear.
To that purpose, 82 depressed patients will be recruited in the study. Half of them will have a history of suicide attempt (suicide attempters) while the other half will have none (affective controls). Their participation will consist of an unique visit.
8,057 studies on the registry are indexed under Depression; 1,641 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 66 is below the median of 84 across 6,720 interventional studies indexed under Depression.
Browse Depression studies →University Hospital, Montpellier is the lead sponsor of 1,244 studies on the registry; 225 are open to participants now.
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Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria:
Depressed patients with a lifetime history of suicide attempt will be evaluated regarding their behavioral adaptation toward negative social cues.
Other: Waiting room task
Depressed patients without history of suicide attempt will be evaluated regarding their behavioral adaptation toward negative social cues.
Other: Waiting room task
The waiting room task consists in a computerized neuropsychological task in which the participant is asked to freely choose a chair to sit in a waiting room. In a row of four chairs, the two in the middle are occupied by two males or females. One of the two subjects sitting either has a neutral face, or express a negative emotion (fear or anger). To make their decision, participants must press the "S" keyboard button to go left or the "L" keyboard button to go right in a time limit of 1500 milliseconds. One third of the time, the cursor moves in the opposite direction to that requested by the participant. For example, if the subject presses "S", the cursor moves to the right instead of to the left. Those reverse trials are used to evaluate their motivation to correct the movement of the cursor. The participant will repeat the task 360 times for the assessment to be completed.
Motivation to avoid anger during the emotional task
Calculation of the proportion of avoidance vs. approach choices from people expressing anger
Time frame: At inclusion
Change in the proportion of avoidant choices in reverse trials compared to normal trials
Computerized calculation of the proportion of avoidance choices in reverse trials and comparison to the proportion calculated in normal trials.
Time frame: At inclusion
Reaction time before clicking
Computerized measurement of reaction time before clicking to make the avoidant or approach choice
Time frame: At inclusion
Reaction time between first and second choices in reverse tests
Computerized measurement of reaction time between the first choice and the second choice during the reverse condition
Time frame: At inclusion
Iowa Gambling Test score
Decision- making impairment assessment with the Iowa Gambling Task. In this task participants are asked to choose between four piles of cards allowing them to earn or lose money. - Among those piles, two are advantageous (little gain and little loss) while the other two are disadvantageous (bigger gain but bigger loss). The goal is to earn as much money as possible. Persistence to choose the disadvantageous piles is interpreted to reflect impulsivity.
Time frame: At inclusion
This study is terminated, as verified in Dec 2021. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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University Hospital, Montpellier