The Laureate Institute for Brain Research (LIBR) has recruited junior investigators with an impressive track record of scientific productivity to lead the four NeuroMAP projects with innovative neuroscience-based research to use individual differences on several biological levels together with sophisticated statistical approaches to generate clinically meaningful predictions of risk and outcomes for mood, anxiety, and eating disorders.
PROJECT 1:
Frontal Stimulation to Modulate Threat Sensitivity in Anxious Depression
MARIA IRONSIDE, PH.D.
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Anxiety is the most common psychiatric comorbidity for depression. However, anxious depression more difficult to treat than non-anxious depression. Therefore, identification of treatment targets specific to this comorbidity is critical. Sensitivity to threat is an adaptive function that becomes maladaptive and exaggerated in anxiety and anxious depression. There is evidence to suggest that heightened threat sensitivity may be a core process underlying anxious depression. Emotional regulation involves the use of top-down control from frontal brain regions to reduce negative responses to threat. Non-invasive brain stimulation of the same frontal brain regions can potentially increase the ability to exert top down control over responses to threat, thereby targeting this core process.
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The current project uses fMRI and electrophysiology to measure the effects of a single session of frontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on threat sensitivity in anxious depression. The findings of the study will inform future clinical trials of tDCS for anxious depression, to help identify the types of patients who will benefit most from this treatment.
Dr Ironside is an Associate Investigator at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. She received her DPhil in Psychiatry from the University of Oxford and completed postdoctoral training at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. |
PROJECT 2:
Augmented Mindfulness Training for Resilience in Early Life (A-MindREaL)
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Childhood maltreatment is a major public health crisis that results in significant disruptions in neurobiological processes and long-term psychiatric and health problems, yet very little is known about interventions that may compensate for or reverse these disruptions. Mindfulness training promotes emotional awareness and regulation by enhancing the development of control over one’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and is thus suited to target neural processes involved in psychological stress responses. Although mindfulness practice has positive effects on both symptoms and brain function, it is unclear whether augmenting mindfulness with neurofeedback-targeted “brain-training” acutely reverses the dysregulation in brain function associated with childhood maltreatment.
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It is also unclear whether this change translates into improvements in psychological functioning in affected adolescents. The findings of the study will lay a foundation for future studies aimed at identifying neurobiologically-informed prevention programs for maltreated youth.
Dr. Kirlic is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. He received his BA in Psychology from Middlebury College and his PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Tulsa. Dr. Kirlic completed his clinical internship at the New Mexico Veterans Affairs Healthcare System and University of New Mexico Hospital, and his postdoctoral training at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. |
NAMIK KIRLIC, PH.D.
PROJECT 3:
Investigating the Effects of Aversive Interoceptive States on Computations Underlying Avoidance Behavior and their Neural Basis
RYAN SMITH, PH.D.
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Anxiety disorders are the most ubiquitous form of mental illness, affecting roughly 34% of the population. While there is growing consensus that the experience of aversive high-arousal states (e.g., a racing heart, difficulty breathing) plays key a role in promoting/maintaining maladaptive decision-making and avoidance behavior in these disorders, the exact influences that affective visceral responses have on decision-making are not well understood. A better understanding of these influences, and their neural basis, will be an important first step to determine brain targets that can be the focus for future development of interventions. The current proposal will ask healthy and anxious individuals to complete two decision-making tasks after entering a high-anxiety state – induced through a safe and effective breathing restriction paradigm.
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Using a neurocomputational modelling approach, findings will reveal how high-anxiety states alter decision processes associated with planning and information-seeking, both of which can influence maladaptive avoidance behavior.
Dr. Smith is an Associate Investigator at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. He received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Arizona and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Arizona Psychiatry Department and University College London. |