Approaching pleasure, avoiding pain: Affective salience and mood disorders

Depression and anxiety have been associated with reduced reward seeking and increased avoidance behaviours respectively. Avoidance and reward seeking behaviours have, in turn, been associated with prepotent responses to withdraw or approach, and the underlying circuitry and pharmacology have been well-characterized in rodent models.

Open questions concern whether symptoms of depression or anxiety can be specifically linked to active vs inhibitory avoidance/reward seeking — in particular when it is necessary to override a prepotent “Pavlovian” response.

Here I describe basic human neuroimaging research modeling how affective information is instantiated in the brain with Pavlovian learning. I further outline findings from a collaborative translational neuroscience research program examining the role played by active vs. inhibitory forms of avoidance in predicting levels of depression and anxiety in a community sample, and of reward sensitivity in discriminating major depressive disorder from bipolar spectrum disorder.

About the speaker

Rebecca Todd is an associate professor in the UBC Department of Psychology and Centre for Brain Health. She has a Master’s degree in Dance from UCLA and worked as a contemporary choreographer and dance writer for a number of years. She subsequently received a PhD in Developmental Science and Neuroscience from University of Toronto, and post-doctoral training in cognitive neuroscience at the Rotman Research Institute and University of Toronto. Her research program focuses on brain and behavioural processes underlying the interaction between human emotion and cognition, in health and in mood disorders, as studied in the lab and in the world. For more about her lab’s research see: http://mclab.psych.ubc.ca/.

About the event

The event will be in person and on Zoom. No registration is required if attending in person. If attending on Zoom, please register.