Description:

Title: Psychopathology Through the Lens of Transdiagnostic Decision Neuroscience

Abstract: 

Each day, we make countless decisions, from the mundane choice of how often to check our email to the more complex dilemma of responding to a friend’s hurtful remark. While a single poor decision – like eating something you know is likely to upset your stomach – has consequences, they are often short-lived. Individuals with personality disorders, however, often exhibit patterns of maladaptive interpersonal decisions that lead to unstable relationships and intense emotional fluctuations. More broadly, mental illness is frequently characterized by recurring patterns of disadvantageous decision-making. These patterns, such as avoiding contexts and cues that elicit fear in phobias, play an important role in maintaining psychopathology and are important to address in treatment. In this talk, I will describe the results of two empirical studies examining decision processes associated with transdiagnostic dimensions of psychopathology, particularly antagonism and neuroticism. First, I will examine how exploitativeness, a facet of antagonism, is associated with stronger representation of learning signals in the default mode network that track the predicted utility of cooperation and scale with reciprocal cooperation. Second, I will describe a study of reinforcement sensitivity and mood in daily life, showing how greater neuroticism, a core component of internalizing, amplifies the prospective effect of sensitivity to rewards and punishments on future negative mood. This work provides a new computational account of how within-person fluctuations in reinforcer sensitivity shape the dynamics of mood.