1 - (OP28) Emerging Developments in Our Understanding of Anhedonic versus Dysphoric Attentional Biases in Depression

Cognitive theories of depression suggest that attentional biases towards dysphoric information and away from positive information contribute to the pathophysiology of depression. Meta-analyses support the presence of these dysphoric and anhedonic biases in depression, though their role as potential risk or maintenance processes has been unclear. Work from our group has started to clarify the importance of dysphoric and anhedonic biases in the maintenance of symptom dimensions of depression. This individual talk will present findings from a series of studies, including a large multi-modal study of attentional biases and depression in community adults ranging from mild to severe depression severity (N = 202) and the largest randomized clinical trial to date of attention bias modification for depression in currently depressed individuals (N = 145). In our work, we find that suggest dysphoric biases contribute to the maintenance of depression (but not other symptom dimensions of depression) but across multiple studies, anhedonic biases are not related to depression, anhedonia, or other symptom dimensions in depression. Such work validates the emphasis on dysphoric biases in the literature but calls into question to what extent attentional biases for positive or rewarding stimuli may contribute to depression versus emerge as an epiphenomenon. Implications for theory, translational research, and future research will be discussed.