Exploring Anxiety in Parkinson's v1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Anxiety, Worry, and Attention in People with Parkinson's
IRAS ID
215211
Contact name
Richard Brown
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 31 days
Research summary
High prevalence rates of anxiety symptoms like worry have often been reported in people with Parkinson's (PwP). Previous studies have shown that anxiety symptoms are associated with attentional and interpretation biases which may trigger and maintain anxiety symptoms. Attentional biases refers to the increased engagement (i.e., quicker to see), maintained attention, and difficulty to disengage (i.e., it takes longer to look away) for a particular class of stimuli. For anxiety, attentional biases for threat information (e.g., negative words, angry faces) appears to be heightened. A negative interpretation bias refers to the tendency to interpret ambiguous situations negatively.
However, till now, no studies looking at cognitive biases in worry have been conducted in PwP. The proposed study aims to compare attentional bias and interpretation bias in high and low worrying PwP's in a cross-sectional single-session study design.
Participants will be recruited from a clinic (Centre of Excellence in Parkinson's and Movement Disorders; King's College Hospital) and through the Parkinson's UK research support network. The study will be conducted in a lab at King's College University (Henry Wellcome Building, Denmark Hill Campus). All participants will complete phase one of the study (one hour), and only high worrying PwP will complete phase two of the study (+ one hour). Phase one of the study includes measures of attentional bias, interpretation bias, and self-report questionnaires to measure symptoms of depression, anxiety, worry, and Parkinson's Disorder. In the second phase of the study, high worriers will be randomised into the control or experimental condition of an attentional bias modification task. To see the temporary effects of modifying attentional bias, the task is followed by measures of attentional bias, intrusive worries (during a breathing focus task), and heart rate variability. An eye-tracker will be used during measures of attentional bias.
REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/LO/2144
Date of REC Opinion
11 Jan 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion