Long-term course of Ambulatory Assessment (AA-) phenotypes and ecological validation of cognitive processes in patients with recurrent depression

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Christine Kühner
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 424724133

The combination of intensive repeated assessments of daily life experiences at the micro-level (bursts) using Ambulatory Assessment (AA) and illness-related factors measured at the macro-level over longer term intervals is recently being regarded as an important innovative approach for dynamic modelling of mental disorders. In this context, however, respective measurement burst designs have not been applied to date for modelling characteristics of the course of illness in mental disorders. In the present project, such a design will be realized in the context of a five-year longitudinal follow-up burst of individuals with recurrent depressive episodes (n=60), who already underwent two AA bursts during a previous study. Thereby, the planned project aims to provide important insight into the stability and change of affective, cognitive, and psychoendocrinological states and processes at the micro-level (AA-phenotypes) and their determinants, measured on different time scales, and will analyse relationships between short- and longer term changes and individual differences therein in the course of illness. Conversely, we will also investigate the role of respective AA-phenotypes as predictors of the clinical course of illness at the macro-level (substudy 1).Furthermore, the interplay of mental and physiological processes during daily life with executive cognitive control and with spontaneous thought during the resting state, both assessed during standardized lab sessions, are increasingly gaining importance in the study of mental disorders. The present project aims to investigate associations of dimensions a) of executive control processes (updating, inhibiting, shifting), and b) of spontaneous thought during the resting state, assessed in the lab, with momentary cognitive (mind wandering, rumination), affective, and psychoendocrinological (cortisol output) processes during daily life in patients with recurrent depression (n=60) and healthy controls (n=60). Finally, we aim at identifying specific cognitive mediation pathways (momentary cognitive processes) contributing to the explanation of the association between dimensions of executive control and spontaneous thought in the lab with daily life mood and cortisol output (substudy 2). The two substudies are interlinked by burst 3 for substudy 1.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Sweden
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Ulrich Ebner-Priemer; Professor Dr. Florian Schmiedek
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. David Marcusson-Clavertz, Ph.D.