TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH
IN AFFECT AND COGNITION
What we do
The goal of our research is to identify biological pathways that give rise to disordered emotional experience. This involves using multiple methodologies, but primarily event-related potentials (ERPs), to measure responses to threats and rewards, and working to establish reliable links between the function of these systems and behavior in healthy populations. With this basic scientific work as a foundation, we have identified abnormalities in multiple systems that characterize emotional dysfunction and risk for emotional dysfunction across multiple forms of psychopathology.
In particular, our work focuses on depression and anxiety, two of the most prevalent and pernicious forms of disease worldwide. They are challenging to treat and even more challenging to untangle from one another. Our research to date has been concerned with using neural responses to reward and threat to identify processes specific to anxiety and depression. Much of our work focuses on a) identifying familially transmitted neural vulnerabilities for depression and anxiety, b) understanding how life experiences influence brain functioning and risk for depression, c) identifying environmental and interpersonal processes that interact with neural vulnerabilities to predict psychopathology, and d) understanding how these neural abnormalities might contribute mechanistically to the development of depression.
Sound interesting? Consider joining our lab or reading some of our publications!