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Cognitive therapy (CT) is clearly effective for mild-to-moderate depression but less so for more-severe depression. These authors investigated whether pupillary response to negatively charged words could predict CT-related remission in more severely depressed patients.
The researchers assessed pretreatment depression severity in 32 outpatients with recurrent major depression and 51 nondepressed controls. Assessment of pupillary dilation was conducted while participants identified words as positive, negative, or neutral; 20 participants also underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during pupil dilation. Measurements were repeated after 16 to 20 CT sessions.
Six of seven patients with an initial Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) sc…