Psychobiological Stress Response Profiles in Current and Remitted Depression: A Person-Centered, Multisystem Approach.

Background: A dysregulated stress response, including exaggerated affective reactivity and abnormal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis responsivity, has been implicated in the etiology, maintenance, and relapse of major depressive disorder (MDD). Among adolescents, discordant affective and physiological stress response profiles have been linked to negative affective outcomes and increased risk for psychopathology. Whether these findings extend to adults with varying degree of MDD risk is unclear, as are possible links to various risk factors.

Using Drift Diffusion and RL Models to Disentangle Effects of Depression On Decision-Making vs. Learning in the Probabilistic Reward Task.

The Probabilistic Reward Task (PRT) is widely used to investigate the impact of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) on reinforcement learning (RL), and recent studies have used it to provide insight into decision-making mechanisms affected by MDD. The current project used PRT data from unmedicated, treatment-seeking adults with MDD to extend these efforts by: (1) providing a more detailed analysis of standard PRT metrics-response bias and discriminability-to better understand how the task is performed; (2) analyzing the data with two computational models and providing psychometric analyses of both; and (3) determining whether response bias, discriminability, or model parameters predicted responses to treatment with placebo or the atypical antidepressant bupropion. Analysis of standard metrics replicated recent work by demonstrating a dependency between response bias and response time (RT), and by showing that reward totals in the PRT are governed by discriminability.

The impact of symptom severity on cognitive function in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A meta-analysis.

Research on cognitive functions in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is notoriously heterogeneous with no moderators identified that account for this variability. OCD severity is the primary potential moderator of interest given the longstanding trait versus state debate. Nevertheless, severity has been previously assessed exclusively as a moderator and was not directly and systematically investigated.

A yoga program for cognitive enhancement.

Background: Recent studies suggest that yoga practice may improve cognitive functioning. Although preliminary data indicate that yoga improves working memory (WM), high-resolution information about the type of WM subconstructs, namely maintenance and manipulation, is not available. Furthermore, the association between cognitive enhancement and improved mindfulness as a result of yoga practice requires empirical examination.