NCT02085512

Prevention of PTSD III: Neurocognitive Training of Emotional Regulation

Prevention of PTSD by Neurocognitive Training of Emotional Regulation

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 180 (actual)
• Sponsor: NYU Langone Health · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 70 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The proposed work will evaluate the ability of neurocognitive retraining of executive functions and emotional regulation to reduce neurocognitive dysfunctions that follow trauma exposure and thereby prevent PTSD. The scientific rationale for this work is the hypothesis that impaired emotional regulation interferes with the expected recovery from the early responses to traumatic events, leading into a chronic disorder. In an initial phase the investigators will recruit 20 recently traumatized participants among trauma survivors admitted to a general hospital emergency room and test the planned intervention's acceptance and right 'dosing'. In the second phase the investigators will enroll 80 recent survivors into a randomized controlled study of the new intervention. The intervention will consist of web-based neurobehavioral training interventions that instill an emotional bias toward positive stimuli, improve emotion recognition and labeling, reduce resistance to emotional distraction, and enhance executive functioning. Control participants will complete web-based video games that do not have emotion-regulatory benefits. Outcome measures will include improvement in neurocognitive functioning and in PTSD symptoms.

Conditions

• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Major Depression
• Anxiety Disorders

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
PROCEDURE	Neurocognitive retraining Web Based Intervention	Neurobehavioral training will be delivered through the web, with prompting for training tasks accomplished through daily emails that include a single integrated log-in system using a customized implementation with OneLogin. All training tasks have "game-like" features making them visually engaging, and motivating. The training tasks provide immediate feedback about performance, and are specifically designed to target circuitry critical for executive functioning (EF) and emotional reactivity.
OTHER	Control, web-based tasks	No training modules

Timeline

• Start date: 2017-03-17
• Primary completion: 2017-12-31
• Completion: 2017-12-31
• First posted: 2014-03-13
• Last updated: 2018-08-31

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Israel