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Mobile Virtual Positive Experiences for Anhedonia

NCT03715400 · Status: SUSPENDED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 74

Last updated 2020-12-11

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Anhedonia is a symptom dimension that characterizes many individuals suffering from depression, as well as some types of anxiety, psychosis, and substance use. For the most part, treatments are effective in decreasing negative affect but ineffective in improving anhedonia, with some antidepressant medications even worsening symptoms of anhedonia. Yet anhedonia is a significant marker of poor prognosis as well as suicidal ideation and actual suicide. The development of effective treatments for anhedonia is thus of paramount importance. Advances in neuroscience indicate specific targets that may underlie anhedonia that can be shifted through behavioral training. The investigators have developed such a program and found it to be effective in raising positive affect, especially for depressed or anxious individuals with anhedonia at baseline. To date, this program has been implemented by highly trained clinicians, which have supervised its implementation on a large scale. Moreover, the behavior program is dependent on readily available rewarding experiences, which anhedonia obviously challenges. Furthermore, mechanistic evaluation is impeded by intra¬- and inter-¬individual variability in exposure to rewarding stimuli. Virtual Reality (VR) offsets these barriers by repeated controlled immersion in experiences designed to enhance approach motivation, initial responsiveness to reward attainment, and reward learning. In this current study, the investigators aim to measure clinical outcomes using Virtual Reality-Reward Training (VR-RT).

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Positive Virtual Reality Training

Participants will undergo 7 45 minute sessions of positive virtual reality training over the course of four weeks. All assessments will be completed online at home following initial orientation to the program.

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Michelle Craske, PhD · University of California, Los Angeles

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
FACTORIAL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
40 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2018-09-01
Primary Completion
2021-01-01
Completion
2021-01-01

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Diseases
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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT03715400 on ClinicalTrials.gov