Citation

Helton WS, Ossowski U, Malinen S. Exp. Brain Res. 2013; 226(3): 357-362.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand, Deak_Helton@canterbury.ac.nz.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s00221-013-3441-4

PMID

23435497

Abstract

The present study was designed to explore the relationships between post-disaster self-reports of depression, vigilance task performance, and frontal cerebral oxygenation. Forty participants (20 women) performed vigilance tasks following a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. In addition to performance, we measured self-reports of depression, anxiety, and stress anchored to the initial earthquake event, and frontal cerebral activity with functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Among the participants, one case may have been an outlier with extremely elevated levels of self-reported depressivity. Excluding the extreme case, there was a correlation between change in response time (response slowing) and depressivity. Including the case there was a correlation between depressivity and right hemisphere oxygenation. These results provide some support for a relationship between moderate depressivity and sustained attention difficulties.

Language: en