Efficiency of cognitive bias modification in posttraumatic stress disorder
ZHANG Fan1,2, YAN Wenjie1,2, HUANG Chenwei3, LIU Weizhi1,2
1. Department of Basic Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; 2. Laboratory for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Faculty of Psychology, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; 3. School of Basic Medical Science, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China
Abstract:Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a persistent mental disorder that can induce negative emotions and social function decline in patients. The main symptoms of PTSD include intrusion (like nightmare), avoidance, cognitive and mood problems, and increased alertness. Many types of cognitive biases including attention bias, memory bias, and interpretation bias are closely related to PTSD. These types of cognitive bias have been viewed as important mechanism in the maintenance of symptoms in several PTSD cognitive processing models. At present, cognitive bias modification includes attentional bias modification (ABM) and cognitive bias modification for interpretation (CBM-I), which are mainly used to ease negative emotion by changing the negative bias or increasing the cognitive processing of neutral or positive information. Some studies have reported that CBM has a positive effect on relieving the severity of post-traumatic stress disorder, but the overall number of studies is small, and there is a lack of intervention for clinical samples and cognitive neuroscience evidence. The efficiency of CBM in relieving PTSD symptoms still needs to be further verified.