Month: February 2019

David T. Hsu
Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology
Stony Brook University

Humans depend on others for survival and emotional well-being. Social rejection – when one is not wanted or liked – is a direct threat to this need, leading to sadness, anxiety, anger, and impulsivity. Several psychiatric disorders stem from abnormal responses to rejection, including major depressive, social anxiety, borderline personality, and substance/alcohol use disorders, yet the neural regulation of rejection is poorly understood. In this talk, I will present laboratory models of social rejection and how they are used in combination with neuroimaging techniques to examine neural responses to social rejection. I will present our work using positron emission tomography (PET) to examine the endogenous opioid response to rejection and show that this response is reduced in depressed individuals, suggesting an inability to regulate social “pain.” I will also present our work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show abnormal neural responses to rejection in depressed women. Lastly, I will present work suggesting that the experience of rejection can be manipulated with neuromodulation, and discuss novel methods for identifying and treating those who are particularly sensitive to rejection.

Akram Bakkour
Department of Psychology
Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute
Columbia University

Memory is central to adaptive behavior, allowing past experience to guide decisions and actions. Indeed, decisions are often informed by memories. However, the neurobiological mechanisms by which episodic memory guides decisions and the consequences for behavior remain poorly understood. We use a computational framework developed for the study of perceptual decisions and adapt it to better understand the cognitive and neural mechanisms of value-based decision making. In this work, we use computational models to generate predictions that we test using fMRI and behavior in patient populations. This framework was adopted to better understand the basic mechanisms by which memory enters the decision process, whether value is constructed, and how preferences may be manipulated. Several psychiatric disorders are characterized by maladaptive decisions that lead to adverse outcomes. I demonstrate the utility of our framework for psychiatry by characterizing choices about food in patients with anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder typified by persistent and stereotypical choices of low-fat, low-calorie foods to the point of starvation. Using computational models to generate predictions that are testable using the tools of cognitive neuroscience offers promise in the search for novel interventions in the treatment of psychiatric disorders.