The modulation of attentional deployment on emotional sensitivity to missed opportunity in depressive individuals: An event-related potential study

Abstract

Background: Depression affects individuals' physical and mental health seriously. It's important to explore the pathological mechanisms underlying depression. However, the emotional sensitivity to missed opportunity in depressive individuals and whether attentional deployment influences it remain unclear. The exploration of these questions could help to find novel approaches for the treatment of depression.

Methods: Experiment 1 investigated the emotional sensitivity to missed opportunity in depressive participants during a sequential risk-taking task relative to healthy participants. Experiment 2 added attentional deployment manipulation to the task, i.e., inducing participants to focus on the positive or negative part of decision outcome, and investigated the modulation of attentional deployment on depressive participants' emotional sensitivity to missed opportunity and the neural mechanisms underlying this process by using EEG.

Results: Depressive participants showed stronger emotional sensitivity to missed opportunity and LPP was a biomarker of this sensitivity. Moreover, focusing on the positive part of outcome reduced depressive participants' emotional sensitivity to missed opportunity effectively, and alpha power in the parietal area played a key role in this process.

Conclusions: The current study primarily revealed that depressive individuals were more sensitive to missed opportunity and attentional deployment was an effective way to modulate this sensitivity.

Keywords: Alpha band; Attentional deployment; Depression; EEG; LPP; Missed opportunity.