Month: September 2018

Rivka Cohen
Department of Psychology
University of Pennsylvania

Memory processes prioritizing the activation of negative cognitions, including thoughts, images, and memories, have long been implicated in major depression. We introduce a model of major depression that characterizes the role of developmental history, emotional context, and retrieval processes in persistent emotional states. Building from the Context Maintenance and Retrieval (CMR) family of models, our theory characterizes how emotional attributes combine with other attributes within the cognitive system, how they are encoded and retrieved, and the influence of these processes on the persistence of emotional attributes within a person’s internal contextual state. The model presents a novel computational account of the development and maintenance of depression, as well as cognitive resilience factors and the time-course of recovery. Finally, the model accounts for the mechanisms underlying empirically validated psychotherapies and factors contributing to subsequent relapse.

Kathryn Biernacki
Centre for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience
Rutgers University Newark

Opioid users often demonstrate substantial decision-making impairments, which not only impair everyday functioning, but may also hinder treatment success and contribute to relapse in this population. However, it is still unclear what underlying factors may contribute to this deficit. In this talk, I will discuss the results of a meta-analysis of decision-making in opioid use disorder (OUD), as well as the results behavioral and psychophysiological experiments examining the potential underlying contributors to the decision-making impairment in long-term opioid users. Briefly, the results of the meta-analysis indicated that the decision-making impairment in opioid users is relatively severe. Further, the psychophysiological experiment revealed that the impairment is not due to an impairment in emotional signaling, while the behavioral experiment demonstrated that this impairment may be more restricted to specific decision-making scenarios (i.e., risky compared to ambiguous situations). I will also present some preliminary data regarding computational modelling of decision-making in OUD, as well as other substance use disorders.  By taking a computational psychiatry approach to OUD, this research program may help to identify specific components of decision-making that become impaired in this group and may inform future treatment practice to better support opioid users.