Can Training Our Attention Patterns Help Treat Depression in the Long Term?

What you need to know

• Attention bias modification (ABM) aims to retrain how people focus their attention, potentially helping with depression
• The study found no long-term benefits of ABM compared to a control treatment after 6 months
• Both groups showed improvement in depression symptoms, but ABM didn’t provide additional benefits

The Promise of Retraining Our Attention

Have you ever noticed how your mind tends to focus more on negative things when you’re feeling down? This tendency to pay extra attention to negative information is called “attention bias” and it’s particularly strong in people with depression. But what if we could retrain our brain to change these attention patterns? This is the idea behind attention bias modification (ABM) - a computerized treatment that aims to help people shift their attention away from negative information and toward more positive things.

How the Study Worked

Researchers recruited 101 adults who were experiencing depression symptoms, with many also having anxiety or other mental health conditions. Half of the participants received real ABM training, while the other half received a similar but inactive version (called “sham” training).

The training involved looking at pairs of faces showing different emotions on a computer screen. In the real ABM training, participants were subtly guided to focus more on positive or neutral faces rather than negative ones. Everyone did the training twice daily for two weeks, with each session lasting 5-7 minutes.

What They Found

The results weren’t quite what the researchers hoped for. While both groups showed improvements in their depression symptoms during the study, there was no significant difference between those who received real ABM training and those who got the sham version after six months.

Interestingly, both groups showed similar improvements during the two-week training period. However, after that, the patterns diverged slightly - though not enough to make a meaningful difference in people’s symptoms. The group that received real ABM showed a small increase in symptoms, while the sham group continued to show small improvements.

Understanding the Results

Why didn’t ABM work better than the control treatment? One important finding was that the ABM training didn’t actually succeed in changing people’s attention patterns - which is supposed to be how it works. This makes it hard to know whether changing attention patterns could help with depression, since the study wasn’t able to successfully modify these patterns.

What This Means for You

If you’re struggling with depression, these findings suggest that ABM in its current form may not be the most effective treatment option. However, this doesn’t mean you should lose hope:

• Several proven treatments for depression are available, including therapy and medication
• The study showed that engaging in structured daily activities (even the control version) might help improve symptoms
• More research is being done to understand how attention affects depression and develop better treatments

Conclusions

• While ABM showed initial promise, this study found no long-term benefits compared to a control treatment
• Both groups improved during the study, suggesting that engaging in structured activities might help depression symptoms
• More research is needed to develop effective ways of changing attention patterns in depression