Our collaborative translational research program aims to use cognitive neuroscience to bridge findings between rodent research and research with patient populations. Our goal is to build on rodent research outlining neural circuitry and neuropharmacology to identify distinct patterns of motivationally and affectively guided brain activation and behaviour that characterize specific aspects of mood disorders/addiction — and are fundamental enough to be conserved across species. By working back and forth between domains and iteratively testing hypotheses arising from rodent research, pre-clinical cognitive neuroscience, and research in patient populations, we hope to more precisely target treatment. Collaborators in this research program from UBC’s Centre for Brain Health Mental Health and Addictions group include Drs. Stan Floresco, Trisha Chakrabartky, Catherine Winstanley and Luke Clark.
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The cognitive effort of decision-making for reward
We often must make decisions about how much effort to deploy to obtain rewards. Sometimes, the cognitive effort of a task such as remembering a long string of numbers or words is perceived to be worth this effort for a reward; other times, it is not. Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash This project is…
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Avoidance and reward seeking in mood disorders
Depression and anxiety are two common mood disorders that have been on the rise worldwide. Anxiety and depression can often occur together. It has been found that when anxiety is present alongside depression, the outcomes of treatment tend to be worse, suggesting that it may be a distinct and more severe subtype of depression. The…