View clinical trials related to Emotions.
Filter by:Emotion regulation difficulties appear to play a role in the development and maintenance of several eating disorders. This pilot study aims at examining whether a short add-on group skills training in emotion regulation for young adults with different eating disorders is feasible in a psychiatric clinical setting. We also investigate if the treatment increases knowledge of emotions, and decreases self-reported difficulties with emotion regulation, alexithymia, symptoms of eating disorder, anxiety and depression, as well as clinical impairment. Six skills training groups were piloted with a total of 29 participants (M = 21.41 years, SD = 1.92). The treatment consists of five sessions dealing with psychoeducation about emotions and emotion regulation skills training. Paired samples t-test was used to compare differences between before-and-after measures.
The guiding scientific premise for this research is that a growth emotion mindset will promote more adaptive emotion processing than a fixed emotion mindset. Because emotional sensitivity is particularly salient in adolescent girls, we will focus on this group. Using an experimental design, adolescent girls will be randomly assigned to either a mindset manipulation or a control group (brain education). Each group will complete a 25-minute computer-based lesson followed by a social stressor and a functional magnetic resonance imaging session. Two specific aims will be addressed: (1) to determine whether a growth mindset induction, relative to a control condition, predicts more adaptive emotion processing at the neural, behavioral, and psychological levels of processing; and (2) to determine whether neural processing of emotion accounts for the effect of a growth emotion mindset manipulation on behavioral and psychological processing of emotion. This study builds on a strong empirical database establishing the effect of mindsets on multiple domains of functioning but will be the first to examine the implications of a growth vs. fixed mindset about emotion for emotion processing in adolescent girls, thereby elucidating one specific youth attribute that can support or disrupt emotional development.
Although correct, consistent condom use can greatly reduce sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies, resistance of condom use is common among young adults. Young men's alcohol intoxication and sexual aggression history are predictive of greater condom use resistance and other sexual risk behaviors (e.g., unprotected sex). Moreover, emotional factors may play a role in these associations, suggesting a promising avenue for continued research. This project builds upon our prior research through investigation of the emotional mechanisms involved in young men's alcohol-related sexual risk behavior. This research addresses a critical knowledge gap and advances the field through the use of multiple methods designed to evaluate distal and proximal emotional factors implicated in alcohol-related sexual risk. Male drinkers aged 21-30 who use condoms inconsistently (N = 420) will first complete a screening procedure followed by a baseline survey that will assess relevant constructs, including emotional traits, emotion dysregulation tendencies, and alcohol expectancies. They will then complete a 30-day daily diary assessment of their daily emotional states, daily coping motives pertaining to drinking and sex, and daily drinking and sexual risk behaviors to evaluate daily relationships among these factors. The same participants will complete an in-lab experiment assessing in-the-moment effects of alcohol intoxication and provocation on emotional states and sexual risk intentions. Statistical analyses will be used to examine the daily influence of emotional states and coping motives on alcohol consumption and sexual risk behaviors and the experimental effects of alcohol intoxication and provocation on emotional states and other mediators, as well as sexual risk intentions. Moderating effects of emotion dysregulation tendencies will also be examined, and the linkages between event-level and experimental relationships will be investigated. This research is both significant and innovative in that it will address the public health concern of men's sexual risk behaviors, including condom use resistance; will evaluate the role of emotional processes in men's alcohol-related sexual risk; and will use multiple methods to gather complementary types of data that will elucidate the mechanisms underlying alcohol-related sexual risk behaviors and provide an empirical evidence base from which to develop and inform prevention and intervention programs.
The proposed research applies the highly innovative technology of real-time functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rtfMRI) to examine plasticity of brain-regulatory mechanisms related to cognitive and affective processing and to determine benefits for cognition and affect in young and older adults and in Parkinson Disease (PD) patients.
Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that combines virtual technology and real-world scenario. In recent years, more and more neuroscience and psychology scientists utilised VR technology in their research. In Hong Kong, many of the community-dwelling elders are immobile. Long-term homestay may negatively affect the emotional state. Measuring the emotional change after administration of VR may prove it as an alternative tool for emotion intervention. The primary objective is to compare the improvement in the emotional changes between intergeneration interaction and the use of VR technology. The secondary objective is to evaluate the side effect after using VR technology. This is a randomized, open label-controlled trial with a crossover design. The subject will be randomized in a ratio of 1:1 into two different intervention groups, the VR group and the Intergeneration Interaction group. After 2 weeks of washout period, the VR group will receive Intergeneration Interaction and vice versa. The intervention phases last approximately 2 hours. The change in the emotional state will be assessed using the Positive and Negative Affect Scale. Any adverse event that causes by the VR will be recorded using the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire(SSQ). This trial is the first study in Hong Kong to investigate the change of emotional state after the administration of VR technology, targeting community-dwelling elders in Hong Kong.
The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of a brief, emotion regulation intervention on the ability to perceive other people's emotions.
This project aims to explore emotional processing and regulation in individuals with Bulimia Nervosa (BN) with a view to better understand its underlying causes. Previous research suggests that binge eating and purging behaviours may be linked to difficulties with emotions and impulses. However, most of the research has been conducted using self-report methods, despite the fact that these individuals have difficulties identifying and describing their emotions (known as alexithymia), making the use of self-report questionable. This project is the first to use electroencephalography (EEG) as an objective method to disentangle emotional processing and regulation in these individuals. A combination of three tasks and questionnaires will be used to measure various aspects of an emotional response and its link to impulsive behaviours in individuals with BN (N=35) and healthy controls (N=35). This study has the potential to inform future treatment for these individuals.
Recent studies indicate that obese teenagers exhibit memory disturbances. Adolescence represents a crucial period in the development of the hippocampus and the amygdala, necessary for the implementation of memory and emotional functions for the rest of life. Disturbances of the interaction between amygdala and hippocampus during adolescence have been associated with the development of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the impact of juvenile obesity on functional amygdala-hippocampus connectivity has not been evaluated yet. The main objective of this study is to compare the emotional memory performance and the level of functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the amygdala during the realization of an emotional associative memory task, in obese and control adolescents.
The role of short chain fatty acids (SCFA) in the microbiota-gut-brain axis is examined in a sample of healthy volunteers. SCFA are the major products of bacterial fermentation of dietary fiber in the colon, and are hypothesised to mediate the bidrectional communication between the gut and the residing microbiota on the one hand, and the central nervous system on the other hand. We perform a 1-week intervention with SCFA and measure their effects on a range of affective outcomes in healthy male volunteers.
The dopamine agonist pramipexole has recently been suggested as a potential novel antidepressant drug. While preliminary clinical data hint at its efficacy in treating depressive symptoms, our current understanding of its impact on neurocognitive processes is relatively limited. This is in part because mechanistic studies have largely focused on the effects of single-dose treatments. However, such acute administration of dopaminergic drugs likely has different cognitive effects than the more prolonged administration that is used clinically. This study therefore aims to explore and characterise the neurocognitive effects of more prolonged pramipexole treatment. Forty healthy volunteers will be randomly allocated to 12 to 15 days of treatment with either pramipexole or placebo. Study participants as well as researchers will be blinded as to which treatment is used. Before and after treatment all participants will perform a set of psychological tasks and questionnaires evaluating reward-based learning, emotional information processing, motivational vigour and subjective experience. Furthermore, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will be used to compare neural activity during emotion and reward processing between the two treatment groups. We hypothesises that pramipexole might enhance reward sensitivity, motivational vigour, and pleasure experience and could induce positive biases in emotional information processing.