Short bouts of physical activity enhance feelings of energy and improve well-being. Circadian rhythm strongly influences mood, but its impact on the association of physical activity and mood is unknown. Intensive longitudinal data were obtained from two independent samples (Ns = 106 and 68), each comprising two groups characterized by distinct manifestations of physical activity and energy: participants with depression (nStudyA = 53; nStudyB = 32) and healthy participants (nStudyA = 53; nStudyB = 36). Participants reported their feelings of energy repeatedly across the day; physical activity was self-rated (Study A) or measured via accelerometers (Study B). Multilevel modeling with three-way moderation analyses was used to test the association of physical activity with feelings of energy as a function of time of day and depression. Across studies, physical activity was consistently related to feelings of energy throughout the day for healthy participants. In contrast, in participants with depression, the relation between physical activity and energy decreased across the day. That participants with depression only felt more energized from physical activity in the morning could be an important starting point for considering circadian rhythm in physical activity interventions for depression. Although the missing ethnicity information from Sample B and high education across samples constrain the generalizability of our findings, the within-person associations nevertheless likely provide relevance for clinical populations and further underscore the potential of intensive longitudinal naturalistic methods to understand complex multidimensional relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
M. Reichert, I. Reinhard, Urs Braun et al.· Journal of Psychopathology a...· 0 citations
BACKGROUND
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a major contributor to global disability and mortality. Cross-sectional studies have linked AUD to reduced cognitive control and heightened risky decision-making. However, the temporal direction of these effects remains unknown: are cognitive-behavioral alterations a consequence or a precursor of changes in drinking?
METHODS
We deployed a battery of smartphone-based, gamified tasks in a one-year longitudinal ecological momentary assessment study of N=603 participants diagnosed with mostly mild to moderate AUD. Tasks measured cognitive control (working memory, response inhibition) and decision-making (risk-taking, information sampling). Participants completed tasks monthly and reported alcohol consumption every two days.
RESULTS
We found that monthly fluctuations in aspects of decision-making predicted subsequent consumption. Specifically, participants shifted to higher monthly alcohol consumption when their risk-taking was higher in a mixed gambling context and lower in a loss context in the preceding month. Further, when information sampling biases decreased, participants consumed more alcohol in the subsequent month. This temporal direction-that within-subject fluctuations in task outcomes preceded changes in monthly drinking-was specific, was not observed vice versa and survived correction for autocorrelation in drinking, indicating risky decision-making as a precursor of subsequent drinking. Fluctuations in cognitive control and risk-taking in a win context were not associated with fluctuations in drinking.
DISCUSSION
Our findings offer novel insights into the cognitive-behavioral forces driving changes in alcohol consumption in AUD: specific decision-making alterations precede changes in consumption. These findings suggest that smartphone-based gamified tasks show promise to identify periods of heightened risk paving the way for mechanism-based, real-time interventions in AUD.
Hilmar Zech, Maria Waltmann, D. Reichert et al.· Biological Psychiatry: Cogni...· 0 citations
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