Topic Overview:

Neural and cognitive processing patterns have been found to distinguish groups of individuals with emotional disorders (e.g., anxiety, depression) from healthy samples, but translating such findings into true advances in clinical care remains a challenge. Research in psychiatry increasingly emphasizes cross-cutting biopsychosocial factors that are heterogeneous within, and across, discrete psychiatric diagnoses. The promise of this work is that it will generate a process-based framework to improve psychiatric assessment and treatment. In this talk, Price will discuss previous findings on neurocognitive factors that may contribute to anxiety and depression across diagnoses and age groups, with a focus on neural substrates of affective information processing. Price will also discuss ongoing attempts to translate such findings into mechanistic treatment strategies and personalized treatment prescriptions capable of remediating neurocognitive disruptions and alleviating symptoms. Specific areas of focus within this work include characterizing neurocognitive processing patterns in affective disorders through behavioral information processing tasks, fMRI, and pupillometry; the targeted modification of cognitive processing mechanisms through computer-based training; and clinical studies of intravenous ketamine for depression and suicidality. Future directions will include ongoing studies that focus on developing novel, synergistic, psychobiological treatment combinations to create and exploit neuroplasticity within affective circuits.