Unintended Deviations of a Random Event Generator by Patients With Late Life Depression and Anxiety During a Direct Mental Influence Task : The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

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Unintended Deviations of a Random Event Generator by Patients With Late Life Depression and Anxiety During a Direct Mental Influence Task

Kadler, Grace HrBSc; Vasudev, Akshya MD†,‡; Ionson, Emily HrBSc†,‡; Barušs, Imants PhD§

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The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 210(4):p 282-289, April 2022. | DOI: 10.1097/NMD.0000000000001443

Abstract

The primary objective was to determine whether depression and anxiety influence the outcome of random microevents in a nonrandom manner in the absence of any physical intervention by using a random event generator (REG). The secondary objective was to correlate other dimensions of consciousness with the REG's output. The experimental group (n = 30) included individuals with depression, the control group (n = 15) included individuals without depression, and the comparison group (n = 10) included individuals with or without depression. It was hypothesized that those with depression or anxiety would significantly deviate the REG in the unintended direction but the whole sample did [t(49) = −2.37, p = 0.022, two tailed]. There was no significant difference between the group means [F(2, 50) = 0.12, p = 0.84] and no robust correlations between dimensions of consciousness and REG activity. Further analysis is needed to understand negative emotions in mind-matter interactions.

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