Stefanie Sequeira Brown University “Multimethod Approaches to Studying the Development of Social Threat and Reward Processes during Adolescence” Adolescence is a period of substantial biopsychosocial development marked by complex social relationships and heightened risk for psychopathology, including anxiety disorders. Adolescents are highly sensitive to social threat (e.g., not getting invited to a party) and reward (e.g., receiving a "like" on Instagram), and the impact of social threat and reward on mental health has become a topic of greater concern with the proliferation of social media. In this talk, I will outline my multidisciplinary program of research that seeks to characterize biobehavioral social threat and reward processes in adolescence, as well as identify how these processes contribute to anxiety. First, I will describe my research linking brain function and real-world social behavior to study reactivity to social threat and reward. Next, I will discuss my work linking social anxiety to heightened reactivity to both social threat and reward, emphasizing the importance of considering reward when studying anxiety. Finally, I will highlight future directions for my research, including leveraging intensive longitudinal designs to: 1) understand how neural and behavioral social reward processes develop during adolescence, and 2) clarify the role of social reward in the etiology and treatment of anxiety disorders. Thursday, February 2, 2023 11:00am -12:00pm 490 Gilmer Academic Commons

Autumn Kujawa
Vanderbilt University

“Translating Affective Neuroscience to Intervention:
The Role of Positive Valence Systems Function in the Development and Treatment of Depression”

Depression is commonly characterized by low activation of the NIMH Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) positive valence systems, which encompasses brain and behavioral responses driving motivation and responses to rewards. Yet, established interventions have less of an effect on enhancing positive valence systems function as they do on reducing negative emotions. I will present a series of studies using multiple methods, with a focus on event-related potentials (ERPs), to examine alterations in positive valence systems function that precede the development of depression. Together, this work suggests that low reward responsiveness reflects an early-emerging vulnerability for depression, and it is critical to consider interactions between positive valence systems and social contexts. Next, I will present a study examining reward responsiveness as a predictor of treatment response in adolescents with depression and a proof-of-concept study aimed at testing the modifiability of reward responses at the neural level. Finally, I will highlight an approach to bridge the gap between neuroscience and clinical practice by developing a novel preventive intervention for children of mothers with depression aimed at directly targeting child positive valence systems function to reduce depression risk. I will end with future directions of this work, including efforts to chart multimethod trajectories of positive valence systems function across critical developmental periods, with the goal of informing personalized prevention and early intervention efforts to reduce the burden of depression on youth and families.

Tuesday, February 7, 2023
11:00am – 12:00pm
490 Gilmer Academic Commons

Michaeline Jensen
University of North Carolina at Greensboro

“Parent-Child Interactions in the Digital Age”

Increasingly, young people's social connections are occurring not just face to face, but through mobile phones and online. Dr. Jensen's research recognizes this shift in communication patterns; she is utilizing mobile phones and the wealth of information contained therein in to elucidate the role of technology in relationship maintenance, mental health, and substance use among young people and to assess and uncover social-communication processes that researchers often struggle to accurately assess via traditional self-report. This talk will focus on the intersections of ubiquitous digital connections and the parent-child relationship across adolescence and into young adulthood.

Tuesday, February 9, 2023
10:30am – 11:30am
490 Gilmer Academic Commons

If you have taught at a university, you have almost certainly taught neurodivergent students. You yourself might also be neurodivergent, or you might have neurodivergent colleagues in your department. What does all of this mean for how you teach, mentor, and communicate? In this session, I will introduce the concept of neurodiversity and some considerations for inclusive language use. I will also share some insights from the Jaswal Lab’s research with autistic students at UVA and how these experiences can inform more inclusive teaching and communication efforts.

Close relationships affect a person’s sense of security and safety. Adults enter new relationships with expectations and tendencies that vary in terms of security in relating to close others in general and to relationship partners in particular. These attachment tendencies can and do change in relationships. I present a novel model of the processes that affect security and describe new programs of research on reducing attachment anxiety and avoidance in adult romantic involvements. I then pivot to relational experiences that undermine security and well-being due to a partner’s aggressive behavior. Of primary importance is non-physical aggression that causes people to experience “invisible” harm.

Aaron Reuben
Duke University

“The Interplay of the Physical Environment with Brain Health across the Lifespan: The Example of
Childhood Lead Exposure”

For 250 years the field of clinical psychology has generated new insights into the etiology and treatment of neuropsychiatric disease by focusing on the social environment and, more recently, the genetic environment. This talk will describe a third research lens that has emerged in force over the past two decades: investigation of the physical environment. This talk will discuss some of the accelerating planetary trends, emerging technologies, and long-standing research tools motivating and facilitating growth in this research area. Discussion will be grounded in details from Dr. Reuben’s work on the lifespan consequences of childhood lead exposure, an on-going and long-standing global problem with underestimated implications for public policy, pediatric medicine, gerontology, and social justice.

Thursday, February 16, 2023
11:00am – 12:00pm
490 Gilmer Academic Commons

Jonathan Schaefer
University of Minnesota

“Approaching the Unanswerable: Using Causally-informative Observational Research to Understand the Relationship between Environmental Exposures and Mental Health”

Mental health problems are highly prevalent and disabling; their onset and severity have also been linked to a variety of environmental factors well within human control. Nevertheless, translating these findings into improvements in population mental health and reductions in health disparities has posed perennial challenges. One significant hurdle is that the gold-standard approach for determining causality—the randomized clinical trial—cannot be ethically used to study the long-term consequences of experiences with putatively “toxic” effects on the brain and behavior. Drawing conclusions from animal research is also challenging, since the non-human analogues of complex psychiatric presentations often differ significantly from their human counterparts. Mental health researchers studying environmental exposures have thus generally had to contend with three possibilities: (1) that the exposure causes mental health problems, (2) that these problems predispose individuals to the exposure, or (3) that the associations between exposure and outcome are driven by other, unmeasured factors. Work that differentiates between these possibilities is needed to guide intervention and policy because if the relationship between an exposure and mental health is largely non-causal, we would expect targeting that exposure to have little positive impact. My program of research addresses this need by using longitudinal and twin methods to answer critical etiological questions regarding specificity, mechanisms, and cause.

Monday, February 20, 2023
3:30pm – 4:30pm
490 Gilmer Academic Commons