Publications

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is characterized by impairing cognitive and behavioral symptoms including inattention, hyperactivity or restlessness, and impulsivity, which interfere with important activities of daily functioning for children and adults. While ADHD is most common in young people, the disorder can continue beyond childhood in 15–35% of those affected. Moreover, many individuals with...

It is widely known that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that pregnant women refrain from drinking alcohol due to the risk of potential adverse outcomes for offspring. However, alcohol use trajectories among adolescent and young adult mothers have been understudied, leaving gaps in our ability to effectively address this important public health issue. In general, adolescence and young...

Regular sleep is critical for both health and optimal brain functioning. Sleep deprivation affects several regions within the brain’s reward circuitry, including the nucleus accumbens, the reward processing hub, as well as connected regions such as the amygdala. Changes in these brain regions are involved in impulsivity and increased drive for rewarding stimuli (such as sweet food), common symptoms of sleep...

To identify neurocognitive mechanisms of mood and anxiety disorders, scientists are increasingly employing computational models to map latent decision-making processes onto dissociable neural substrates and clinical phenotypes. However, the reliability of measures used in research in this area up to now has been unclear. In a study recently published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging...

Dysregulated affective dynamics (i.e., how emotions ebb and flow over time) have most often been studied among people with a given disorder compared to an unaffected control group. However, this approach has yielded inconsistent findings because many emotional states are seen across multiple psychopathologies. In fact, research has shown that psychiatric disorders are organized by evidence of internalizing (e.g...

Adolescence can be marked by heightened reward drive and sensation-seeking behaviors, which engage the reward system. These behaviors are thought to be caused by a developmental peak in dopamine processing in the nucleus accumbens, part of the striatal reward system. However, a better understanding of the relationship between these behaviors and dopamine has been difficult to achieve because the standard techniques...