Publications by authors named "Nessa Ikani"

Article Synopsis
  • Depression leads to weakened positive memory recall and a strong negative memory bias that can linger even after recovery.
  • A study utilized Ecological Momentary Assessments with currently depressed, remitted, and never-depressed individuals to analyze mood state recall accuracy.
  • Findings indicate that currently depressed individuals had the most accurate memory recall, while never-depressed individuals' accuracy varied with their mood, highlighting distinct memory biases across different groups.
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Background: Late-life depression is a serious mental health problem. Behavioral Activation (BA) is an effective, accessible psychotherapeutic treatment for older adults. However, little is known about which symptoms decrease and how associations between depressive symptoms change during BA treatment.

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Background: Smartphone-based digital phenotyping enables potentially clinically relevant information to be collected as individuals go about their day. This could improve monitoring and interventions for people with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). The aim of this systematic review was to investigate current digital phenotyping features and methods used in MDD.

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Anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are among the most prevalent mental disorders across the lifespan. Yet, it has been suggested that there are phenomenological differences and differences in treatment outcomes between younger and older adults. There is, however, no consensus about the age that differentiates younger adults from older adults.

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Recurrence in major depressive disorder (MDD) is common, but neurobiological models capturing vulnerability for recurrences are scarce. Disturbances in multiple resting-state networks have been linked to MDD, but most approaches focus on stable (vs. dynamic) network characteristics.

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Negative memory bias refers to the enhanced recall of negative memories and is a prominent cognitive factor causing and maintaining depression. Surprisingly few studies modify this negative recall. The current study used a smartphone-based autobiographical memory training to increase positive memory recall and thereby alter negative memory bias.

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Cognitive theories of depression hold that negative contextual triggers (e.g., stressful events) induce more negative and less positive mood, in turn instigating negatively biased memories.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented societal changes limiting us in our mobility and our ability to connect with others in person. These unusual but widespread changes provide a unique opportunity for studies using digital phenotyping tools. Digital phenotyping tools, such as mobile passive monitoring platforms (MPM), provide a new perspective on human behavior and hold promise to improve human behavioral research.

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Trauma survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently experience intrusive trauma memories associated with a feeling of "nowness". Information-processing models of PTSD ascribe these symptoms to an insufficient integration of memories with their spatio-temporal context in the past, turning them into powerful stressors. Here, we tested the idea that automatic associations of trauma reminders with the present or the past predict intrusive memories.

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An interesting factor explaining recurrence risk in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) may be neuropsychological functioning, i.e., processing of emotional stimuli/information.

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Background And Objectives: Attention Bias Modification (ABM) is used to manipulate attention biases in anxiety disorders. It has been successful in reducing attention biases and anxious symptoms in social anxiety and generalized anxiety, but not yet in specific fears and phobias.

Methods: We designed a new version of the dot-probe training task, aiming to train fearful participants' attention away from or towards pictures of threatening stimuli.

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