The antidepressant effect of cognitive reappraisal training on individuals cognitively vulnerable to depression: Could cognitive bias be modified through the prefrontal–amygdala circuits?

Cognitive reappraisal (CR) is one of the core treatment components of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and is the gold standard treatment for major depressive disorders. Accumulating evidence indicates that cognitive reappraisal could function as a protective factor of cognitive vulnerability to depression. However, the neural mechanism by which CR training reduces cognitive vulnerability to depression is unclear. There is ample evidence that the prefrontal–amygdala circuit is involved in CR. This study proposes a novel cognitive bias model of CR training which hypothesizes that CR training may improve the generation ability of CR with altered prefrontal–amygdala functional activation/connectivity, thus reducing negative cognitive bias (negative attention bias, negative memory bias, negative interpretation bias, and/or negative rumination bias) and alleviating depressive symptoms. This study aims to (1) explore whether there is abnormal CR strategy generation ability in individuals who are cognitively vulnerable to depression; (2) test the hypothesis that CR training alleviates depressive symptoms through the mediators of cognitive bias (interpretation bias and/or rumination bias); (3) explore the neural mechanism by which CR training may enhance the ability of CR strategy generation; and (4) examine the short- and long-term effects of CR training on the reduction in depressive symptoms in individuals who are cognitively vulnerable to depression following intervention and 6 months later. The study is promising, providing theoretical and practical evidence for the early intervention of depression-vulnerable individuals.