Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Clinical Division of Social Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2022 Jan;239(1):277-286. doi: 10.1007/s00213-021-06003-6. Epub 2021 Nov 6.
Bright light treatment (BLT) is an efficacious antidepressant intervention, but its mechanism of action is not well understood. Antidepressant drugs acutely affect how emotional information is processed, pushing the brain to prioritise positive relative to negative input. Whether BLT could have a similar effect is not known to date.
To test whether BLT acutely influences emotional information processing similar to antidepressant drugs, using an established healthy volunteer assay.
Following a double-blind, parallel-group design, 49 healthy volunteers (18-65 years, 26 females) were randomly allocated to 60-min BLT (≥ 10,000 lux) or sham-placebo treatment early in the morning in autumn/winter. Immediately after treatment, emotional information processing was assessed using the Oxford Emotional Test Battery, a validated set of behavioural tasks tapping into emotional information processing in different cognitive domains. Participants also completed questionnaires before and after treatment to assess changes in subjective state.
The BLT group did not show significantly more positively biased emotional information processing compared to the placebo group (p > 0.05 for all measures). After adjustment for pre-treatment scores, there were also no significant post-treatment differences between groups in subjective state (p > 0.05 for all measures).
BLT did not show immediate effects on emotional information processing in an established healthy volunteer assay. Thus, BLT might exert its clinical effects through a different (cognitive) mechanism than other antidepressant interventions. Future studies should corroborate this finding including clinical populations and more intensive treatment regimes, and control for potential chronobiological effects.
亮光治疗（BLT）是一种有效的抗抑郁干预措施，但它的作用机制尚不清楚。抗抑郁药物会急性影响情绪信息的处理方式，促使大脑优先处理积极信息而不是消极信息。目前还不知道 BLT 是否会产生类似的效果。
使用已建立的健康志愿者检测方法，测试 BLT 是否会像抗抑郁药物一样急性影响情绪信息处理。
采用双盲、平行分组设计，49 名健康志愿者（18-65 岁，26 名女性）在秋冬季节的清晨被随机分配接受 60 分钟的 BLT（≥10,000 勒克斯）或假光治疗。治疗后立即使用牛津情绪测试电池进行情绪信息处理评估，这是一组经过验证的行为任务，可在不同认知领域中测量情绪信息处理。参与者还在治疗前后完成了问卷调查，以评估主观状态的变化。
BLT 组与安慰剂组相比，情绪信息处理没有明显更偏向积极（所有指标的 p > 0.05）。调整治疗前分数后，两组之间的主观状态在治疗后也没有显著差异（所有指标的 p > 0.05）。
BLT 在已建立的健康志愿者检测中没有显示出对情绪信息处理的即时影响。因此，BLT 可能通过与其他抗抑郁干预不同的（认知）机制发挥其临床效果。未来的研究应包括临床人群和更密集的治疗方案，并控制潜在的生理节律效应，以证实这一发现。
