Pour cette conférence, le CINQ a le plaisir d'accueillir Mme Anna Weinberg. Mme Weinberg est professeure adjointe dans le département de psychologie à l'Université McGill et chercheure au GRIP.
Titre de la conférence: Familial and environmental contribution to risk for depression across the lifespan
Résumé: Anhedonia, a cardinal feature of depression, entails reduced reactivity to pleasurable occurrences and outcomes. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that abnormalities in the ability to respond to these positive events also relate to risk for anhedonia and depression. This talk will present data from a series of studies measuring neural markers of perturbations in the positive valence system using event-related potentials (ERPs). I will present data in support of the idea that reduced neural response to positive outcomes—from monetary rewards to positive social stimuli—might represent a vulnerability marker for reduced hedonic capacity, as well as data suggesting it is a specific marker of vulnerability, in that it is not associated with anxiety disorders, symptoms of anxiety, or negative affect more broadly. Additionally, I will present data exploring the familial nature of these neural deficits, as well as evidence that these ERPs might be useful measures of stress-induced anhedonia. And finally, I will discuss ongoing studies in my lab that attempt to examine the predictive power of reduced neural response to positive stimuli by looking at how these neural responses prospectively predict symptoms and dysfunction, how these neural deficits might interact with stressors, and finally how these neural responses might contribute to the generation of stress.
