We have many ongoing projects in the lab. Below are some examples of the topics we are currently investigating. If you have schizophrenia and want to participate in one of our studies, click here. 

The Time Course of Emotion

We are exploring the time course of emotion using behavioral, psychophysiological, self-report, and fMRI methods. We study healthy individuals and individuals with schizophrenia or depression. In a series of studies, we are examining maintenance  and anticipation 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 people with schizophrenia  have no trouble responding to emotional stimuli in-the-moment, as reflected by self-report, emotion modulation of the startle response, and brain activation. However, people with schizophrenia appear to have difficulty maintaining an emotional response once evocative stimuli are removed from view. We are following up our initial behavioral and fMRI findings in collaboration with Cam Carter and Stefan Ursu at UC Davis (http://carterlab.ucdavis.edu) where are examining whether people with and without schizophrenia can maintain emotion in the face of distraction in order to guide their behavior (indicate the desire to re-view particular images based on how emotional feelings associated with the images). 

We have also examined anticipatory processes using the emotion modulated startle paradigm. In this work, we find that responses to cues about forthcoming emotional stimuli predict the magnitude of in-the-moment responses. In addition, the extent to which we feel emotion in anticipation of things to come predicts how well we remember those events a day or two later. We are following up these finding in studies with individuals who have schizophrenia or depression. 

The Nature of Pleasure and Anhedonia

Anhedonia refers to diminished capacity to experience pleasure and it is a central feature of depression and schizophrenia. In schizophrenia, we think that the anhedonic deficit lies in the anticipation of future events, what we term anticipatory pleasure. 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. People with schizophrenia appear to have difficult predicting that future positive events will be pleasurable. We are interested to see if this difficulty in prediction is also observed for future negative events.

We have also developed and validated a self-report measure to assess the disposition to experience pleasure in anticipation of things to come. 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 people without schizophrenia, those with schizophrenia  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 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. 

Assessing and Treating Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia

Negative symptoms in schizophrenia (flat affect, anhedonia, alogia, asociality, avolition) remain a huge unmet treatment need. Our group is part of the Collaboration to Advance Negative Symptom Assessment in Schizophrenia (CANSAS), 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 Assessment Scale (NSAS) has been developed, and efforts are currently underway to refine and validate the scale, with the generous support of NIMH.

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. 

Emotion and Cognition 

People with schizophrenia who have difficulty maintaining emotional responses also exhibit difficulties in attention, such that people 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 how these deficits in turn are linked with deficits in emotion.

Recent findings in neuroscience suggest that our ability to prospect into the future relies upon our ability to remember the past. We are currently studying how emotion can be the "tie that binds" our thoughts about the future and recollections of the past. 

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.  

Social Context, Gender, and Emotion  

We have learned a good deal about the nature of emotional responding in schizophrenia, yet most of this work has been with men. Preliminary findings from our lab suggest that diminished emotional expression is also observed among women with schizophrenia along with intact reports of emotional experience. We have continuing interests in how social context and gender shape emotional expression, experience, and physiology, as well as the anticipation of future events. We are currently interested in investigating the ways in which the brain supports anticipation of social encounters, both positive and negative, and how social signals such as smiles and frowns can influence our decision making.

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last modified 10/22/2009