Date: Friday, February 28th
Time: 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
Location: Room 1116, 11th floor (100 College Street, New Haven, CT 06510)
Title: Think About It: Persecution as Failures of Deliberation
Abstract: Clinical cognitive neuroscience has long sought to link clinical symptoms and dimensions of psychopathology to underlying brain impairments. A key tool in this search has been to show heterogeneity in brain mechanisms is related to the expression of symptoms. To explain my growing concern about this paradigm, I will share two psychosis research programs in my laboratory using fMRI to target disorganization and persecutory ideation. To target disorganization and the executive control network, we have used a number of cognitive control or deliberation paradigms demonstrating relationships to the genetic liability to the disorder as well as plasticity in the underlying mechanisms. To target persecution and the salience detection network, we have used a social decision-making game called the Minnesota Trust Game in fMRI, which allows us to distinguish between betrayal aversion and spite sensitivity. Our latest study combines measures of deliberation and measures of persecution, and the findings have unsettled my faith in the core assumptions of clinical cognitive neuroscience. I’ll unpack the challenge to the paradigm, and how we’re rethinking these approaches.