We have many ongoing projects in the lab. Below are some examples of the topics we are currently investigating. 

The Nature of Pleasure and Anhedonia

Anhedonia refers to diminished capacity to experience pleasure and it is a central feature of depression and schizophrenia. We are investigating the nature of anhedonia by adopting a basic emotion perspective to the study of pleasure. We have developed and validated a self-report measure to assess the time course as well as different components of pleasure. The Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) assesses both anticipatory and consummatory pleasure. The scale has demonstrated good psychometric properties and convergent and discriminant validity. Compared to healthy controls, schizophrenia patients appear to have a deficit in anticipatory, but not consummatory pleasure. We are following up these findings in a number of behavioral, self-report, and fMRI studies. 

In collaboration with Cam Carter and Stefan Ursu at UC Davis (http://carterlab.ucdavis.edu), we will be examining brain activation during anticipation of positive and negative emotional stimuli among schizophrenia patients early in the course of their illness. 

In collaboration with Raymond Chan, PhD at the Institute of Psychology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, we are examining the cross-cultural applicability of the TEPS among students in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Guangzhou. 

The Time Course of Emotion

We are exploring the time course of emotion more broadly using behavioral, self-report, and fMRI methods. We study healthy individuals and individuals with schizophrenia or depression. In a series of studies, we are examining maintenance of emotional responses among individuals with and without schizophrenia. The maintenance of an emotional response is critical for guiding future behavior and decision making. Data from our lab indicate that schizophrenia patients have no trouble responding to emotional stimuli in-the-moment, as reflected by self-report and emotion modulation of the startle response. However, patients have difficulty maintaining an emotional response once evocative stimuli are removed from view, We are following up these behavioral findings with an fMRI study in collaboration with Cam Carter and Stefan Ursu at UC Davis. Preliminary data indicate that schizophrenia patients activate DLPFC, OFC, and amygdalae during presentation of emotionally evocative stimuli, but they do not maintain this activation after the offset of emotionally evocative stimuli, further bolstering the idea that patients have difficulty maintaining their emotional responses.

We also continue to be interested in the extent to which memory of emotional experiences and events is used to guide anticipatory processes, and we are planning additional studies to examine emotion memory in schizophrenia. In addition, we are studying the extent to which anticipatory processes provoke feelings that in turn guide future behavior. 

Emotion and Cognition in Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia patients who have difficulty maintaining emotional responses also exhibit difficulties in attention, such that patients who were better at a task requiring top-down attentional processes, including goal maintenance, were better able to maintain their emotional response once the picture was removed from view. We are following up these behavioral findings in an fMRI study that seeks to test the hypothesis that specific cognitive control functions normally supported by the prefrontal cortex are impaired in schizophrenia, and these deficits in turn are linked with deficits in emotion.

Anticipatory pleasure can be further parsed into two components: (1) predicting the future experience of pleasure, and (2) the concurrent experience of pleasure knowing that a future activity is going to occur - that is, the pleasure experienced in anticipation of things to come. The ability to predict or "forecast" into the future about pleasure involves a number of complex cognitive processes that have been well-characterized among healthy individuals by social psychologists. We are translating these findings to the study of anticipatory pleasure in schizophrenia to examine how cognition and emotion interact. 

Assessing and Treating Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia

Negative symptoms in schizophrenia (flat affect, anhedonia, alogia, asociality, avolition) remain a huge unmet treatment need. Dr. Kring is part of the Collaboration to Advance Negative Symptom Assessment in Schizophrenia, along with Jack Blanchard, PhD, Raquel Gur, MD, and Bill Horan, PhD. We participated in the NIMH-MATRICS Consensus Development Conference on Negative Symptoms, and were part of the workgroup that was charged with developing a new clinical rating scale for negative symptoms. From these efforts, a new clinical rating scale, the Negative Symptom Rating Scale (NSRS; beta version available at http://www.matrics.ucla.edu/matrics-neg-symptom-initiative-frame.htm) has been developed, and efforts are currently underway to refine and validate the scale.

In collaboration with David Penn, Ph.D. and Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D. of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, we are working to develop and test a psychosocial treatment for negative symptoms that incorporates findings on anhedonia, emotion, and meditation practices. 

Gender,  Emotion, and Schizophrenia 

We have learned a good deal about the nature of emotional responding in schizophrenia, yet most of this work has been with male patients. Preliminary findings from our lab suggest that diminished emotional expression is also observed among women with schizophrenia along with intact reports of emotional experience.

Emotion in the Daily Life of Schizophrenia Patients

We have completed one study using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to study the kinds of emotions schizophrenia patients report experiencing in daily life. We are interested in linking patients' emotional experience with their daily activities, and we plan to continue to use this method to add ecological validity to our laboratory based investigations of emotion in schizophrenia.

Social Context, Gender, and Emotion  

We have continuing interests in how social context and gender shape emotional expression, experience, and physiology. We have done both laboratory and experience sampling studies to examine these questions. Some of these studies examine emotionally-charged interactions, such as teasing, among healthy individuals and those with different psychological disorders (ADHD, Autism). 

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last modified 07/08/2008