Personal Zen Review

A 2014 study examined if a mobile intervention using attention-bias modification training (ABMT) (Personal Zen uses this type of training) would be an effective treatment for stress and anxiety. 78 highly trait anxious participants were drawn from an Introduction to Psychology course at an urban university in New York City. Participants were randomly assigned to either a placebo condition or either a single long ABMT (45 minutes) or short ABMT session (25 minutes). It was found that ABMT sessions, relative to the placebo one, reduced subjective anxiety, and observed reactivity. The long sessions showed reductions in core cognitive processes with stress and anxiety. (Dennis & O’Toole. 2014. https://dennis-tiwary.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/2014b.pdf)

A gamified ABMT mobile application, Personal Zen, was utilized in a study of 42 (21 female) trait anxious adults. Participants would be randomly assigned to either an ABMT or a placebo condition. EEG recordings were taken during pre- and post-training threat bias assessment to determine neurocognitive responses to threats. Following the assigns to the apps, subjective anxiety, and stress responses (observed and reported) were measured. It was found that ABMT showed improvements to performance during stress tasks. (Dennis, Egan, Babkirk, Denefrio. 2016. https://dennis-tiwary.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Dennis-Tiwary-et-al-2016.pdf)

This paper wanted to investigate whether a mobile gamified ABMT would reduce prenatal threat bias, anxiety, stress, and if ABMT’s efficacy varied with individuals’ differences in neural responses to threat. 29 women in their 19th-29th week of pregnancy took part in this study. These participants were randomized to four weeks of an ABMT (Personal Zen) or a placebo version of an app using a double-blind design. Self-report measures of anxiety, depression, and stress were obtained; salivary cortisol was collected at home and in the lab in response to stressors; and threat bias was measured using a computerized attention assay using an EEG that recorded threat cues. It was found that ABMT’s main effect was a reduction in cortisol which then correlated to lower levels of subjective anxiety and threat bias. ABMT was also found to reduce behavioral indices of prenatal stress and anxiety but the effects varied with individual differences in cortisol response and neurocognitive indices of early attention to threat. (Dennis-Tiwary, Denefrio, & Gelber. 2017. https://dennis-tiwary.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/1-s2.0-S0301051117300893-main.pdf)