Oded Bein (Weill Cornell Medicine)

Presenter: Oded Bein (Weill Cornell Medicine)

Title: Putting reward in context for anxiety and depression

Abstract:

Anxiety and depression are the most common mood disorders, yet existing interventions are not effective enough and do not reach enough people. My work addresses this challenge through a mechanistic approach to treatment development: first identifying neural and cognitive processes that give rise to these disorders, and then designing streamlined, scalable interventions that directly target those mechanisms and can be delivered broadly in the community. In this talk, I will present research inspired by reinforcement learning theory, ​based on the premise that a clear context representation supports adaptive reward learning and response. I will begin by discussing context representation, showing that individuals with anxiety tend to segment continuous experience into overly precise contexts, whereas individuals with depression show poor segmentation. I will then present behavioral and computational findings on reward-processing deficits in older adults with depression and introduce a novel, scalable psychotherapy for late-life depression that targets reward deficits by increasing engagement in rewarding social interactions.

This is a virtual talk from 3-4:30 and will be held on Zoom: https://uvic.zoom.us/j/5855919463?pwd=NlNSdE02RVlKQUVtRVUzL3lWM0xMdz09