AUTHOR=Gall Richard , Mcdonald Nastasia , Huang Xiaofei , Wears Anna , Price Rebecca B. , Ostadabbas Sarah , Akcakaya Murat , Woody Mary L. TITLE=AttentionCARE: replicability of a BCI for the clinical application of augmented reality-guided EEG-based attention modification for adolescents at high risk for depression JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience VOLUME=18 YEAR=2024 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2024.1360218 DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2024.1360218 ISSN=1662-5161 ABSTRACT=

Affect-biased attention is the phenomenon of prioritizing attention to emotionally salient stimuli and away from goal-directed stimuli. It is thought that affect-biased attention to emotional stimuli is a driving factor in the development of depression. This effect has been well-studied in adults, but research shows that this is also true during adolescence, when the severity of depressive symptoms are correlated with the magnitude of affect-biased attention to negative emotional stimuli. Prior studies have shown that trainings to modify affect-biased attention may ameliorate depression in adults, but this research has also been stymied by concerns about reliability and replicability. This study describes a clinical application of augmented reality-guided EEG-based attention modification (“AttentionCARE”) for adolescents who are at highest risk for future depressive disorders (i.e., daughters of depressed mothers). Our results (n = 10) indicated that the AttentionCARE protocol can reliably and accurately provide neurofeedback about adolescent attention to negative emotional distractors that detract from attention to a primary task. Through several within and cross-study replications, our work addresses concerns about the lack of reliability and reproducibility in brain-computer interface applications, offering insights for future interventions to modify affect-biased attention in high-risk adolescents.