Cognitive remediation therapy for patients with depression

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Daniela Roesch-Ely; Professor Dr. Robert Christian Wolf, since 8/2017
• Subject Area: Clinical Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 256846284

Depression is one of the major causes of long-term disability at a high cost for the individual patient and society. Beside illness severity itself, cognitive impairment plays a critical role for general functioning in major depression as it may persist even after remission of other psychopathological symptoms. Therefore, Cognitive Remediation Therapy (CRT) is increasingly discussed as an important therapeutic intervention for depressed patients. Up to now, only few empirical studies investigated the usefulness of cognitive remediation in MDD patients with persistent cognitive deficits. For this reason, the main goal of this study is to examine the effectiveness of cognitive training in those MDD patients who suffer from cognitive deficits despite remission of acute depressive symptoms. It is expected that cognitive training significantly improves neuropsychological functioning in comparison to the passive control condition. Furthermore, for psychiatric patients in general the existing positive findings of CRT stem from a wide array of different training designs, which render the optimal design a matter of considerable debate. Several authors have emphasized the need to individualize CRT in order to increase effects on cognition, motivation and transfer to real-world situations. This approach contrasts with generic training programs, which target a broad set of functions. However, no direct comparison between individualized and generic training programs has been conducted so far. Therefore, in the present study, both an individualized as well as a generalized training approach will be used and compared on an exploratory level. Long term effects of the intervention at 6-month follow-up as well as effects on psychosocial functioning will also be investigated on an exploratory level.Moreover, a combined resting-state and task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging protocol will be employed to investigate treatment-related adaptive changes of neural function in patients. Both regional specific brain activation changes and changes of functional network connectivity will be investigated.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Philipp Thomann, from 10/2014 until 8/2017