Publications
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 Information-Processing Biases in Depression and Anxiety
People diagnosed with clinically significant depression or anxiety have been found to exhibit biases in the processing of emotional information, particularly when they are in the midst of a significant depressive or anxious episode. The causal status and functional significance of these biases in precipitating and maintaining depression and anxiety is not yet clear. One major aim of our research is to examine the role of cognitive biases in the onset and maintenance of depressive and anxious episodes, and in recovery from these disorders.
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Intergenerational Transmission of Psychopathology
Having parents with depressive or anxiety disorders increases the risk of these disorders in children and adolescents. The mechanisms by which this risk is transmitted from parent to child, however, are not well understood. In our lab we are examining a large number of biological, cognitive, and social factors in the young children of mothers who have experienced depression or anxiety. A major aim of this project is to identify specific characteristics of both parents and children that will help us to understand why a significant proportion of the children will go on to develop a psychiatric disorder.
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 fMRI and the Neural Bases of Depression
A growing body of research is demonstrating that depressed people differ from nondepressed people both in the volume of specific brain structures and in their patterns of neural activation in response to the processing of emotional stimuli. We are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine specific patterns of brain activation that characterize the functioning of depressed and anxious individuals as they process emotional information and respond to various types of positive and negative stimuli.
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