title: Post-disaster depression and vigilance: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.
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.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand. Deak_Helton@canterbury.ac.nz
authors: William S
authors: WS
authors: Helton
authors: Ulrike
authors: U
authors: Ossowski
authors: Sanna
authors: S
authors: Malinen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004190:Disasters; D055866:Earthquakes; D005260:Female; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009520:New Zealand; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D019265:Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology*