Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Pilot Blinded, Randomized Study of Stimulation Type
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is becoming a recognized and accepted form of psychotherapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet, its mechanism of action remains unclear and much controversy exists about whether eye movements or other forms of bilateral kinesthetic stimulation contribute to its clinical effects beyond the exposure elements of the procedure. METHODS: Twenty-one patients with single-event PTSD (average Impact of Event Scale score: 49.5) received three consecutive sessions of EMDR with three different types of auditory and kinesthetic stimulation (tones and vibrations): intermittent alternating right-left (as commonly used with the standard EMDR protocol), intermittent simultaneous bilateral, and continuous bilateral. Therapists were blinded to the type of stimulation they delivered, and stimulation type assignment was randomized and counterbalanced. RESULTS: All three stimulation types resulted in clinically significant reductions of subjective units of distress (SUD). Yet, alternating stimulation resulted in faster reductions of SUD when only sessions starting with a new target memory were considered. CONCLUSIONS: There are clinically significant effects of the EMDR procedure that appear to be independent of the nature of the kinesthetic stimulation used. However, alternating stimulation may confer an additional benefit to the EMDR procedure that deserves attention in future studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".