Effects of single sessions of EMDR using bilateral light stimulation instead of eye movement Part 1: Investigation of changes in SUDs and VoC

Bilateral eye movement (EM) has been the modality of the first choice as bilateral stimulation for EMDR, which has been used for the stimulation of the eyes since Shapiro [1] first developed EMDR. However, bilateral light stimulation (LS) can also be another option that can provide stimulation to the eyes. We compared the effects of bilateral LS using a glass-type device with the effects of bilateral EM in EMDR sessions, indicating bilateral LS had nearly the identical effects to bilateral EM [2]. Nevertheless, no statistical analyses were conducted in our study because of the small sample size. Therefore, the current study statistically analyzed the effects of bilateral LS. Participants (N = 10, M = 33.70 years, SD = 8.97) for the experiment were recruited among acquaintances of the researchers as nonclinical volunteers. Bilateral LS was provided in single sessions of EMDR with the standard protocol, and participants’ SUDs and VoC scores were recorded. The results of a repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated a significant difference in SUDs (F (1, 9) = 49.59, p <.001) and in VoC (F (1, 9) = 32.11, p <.001) before and after reprocessing of traumatic memories using bilateral LS (Figure 1, & 2). These results suggest that the effects of single sessions of EMDR using bilateral LS is nearly identical to EMDR using bilateral EM.

Conference

English

Nobuhiko Asai
Takahiro Imaida
Shin-ichi Oura
Yoshikazu Fukui

Asai, N., Imaida, T., Oura, S., & Fukui, Y. (2021, June). Effects of single sessions of EMDR using bilateral light stimulation instead of eye movement Part 1: Investigation of changes in SUDs and VoC. Poster presented at the 20th EMDR Europe Association Conference, Virtual