Inaugural International Digital Mental Health and Wellbeing Conference

Profile

Ciara McCabe is Professor of Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Mental Health and a University Research Fellow at Reading University. She has been director of the Neuroscience of Reward Group at Reading since 2013. She examines the processing of primary and secondary rewards at the behavioural and neural level and how this relates to the symptom of anhedonia in depression. She also examines how drug treatments interact with the reward response.

Ciara did her BSc in Psychology at Queens University, Belfast. She did her PhD on the effects of anxiolytic drugs on animal models of frustrative non-reward at the University of Ulster, with Prof Leslie and in collaboration with Merck, Sharpe and Dohme. She did her first post doc with Prof Nader in primate models of drug addiction at Wake Forest, NC, USA.

Ciara then moved to the Experimental Psychology Department at Oxford University to work on the brains response to primary rewards in humans with Professor Rolls and subsequently to the Psychiatry Department at Oxford University to work on neuropsychopharmacology and reward processing in patient and at-risk groups with Prof Harmer and Prof Cowen.

She was awarded the Senior Non-Clinical Psychopharmacology Award and two separate In-Vivo Awards from The British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP). She was also awarded the Rafaelsen Investigator Award from The International College of Neuropsychopharmacology, a Fellowship Award from the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology and an Eli Lilly Fellowship Award presented at the BAP. She has held funding from the Medical Research Council and various Industry collaborators.

Ciara is also Director of the Reading Scholars Programme in Psychology a widening participation programme for under-represented students. Ciara was an elected BAP councillor and trustee of the charity Immigrant Counselling and Psychotherapy (ICAP) for 5 years.

Title

'Examining real life reward function using digital EMA to find targets for anhedonia in adolescents'

Abstract

Adolescence is a period of change that crucially increases vulnerability to depression. Studies report blunted neural responses to reward that relate to positive affect and depression symptoms in adolescents. However how these results relate to the symptom of anhedonia (lack of pleasure and interest) in adolescents is not entirely clear.

We have been examining how the brain responds to reward and aversion in those at risk of depression and adolescents with depression and anhedonia symptoms. Using fMRI we have shown how different components of reward and aversion processing such as the anticipation and consummation relate to anhedonia. We have also begun to measure effort for reward as a proxy for motivational deficits in depression. Our work shows that there are blunted brain responses to reward and aversion in adolescents with symptoms of depression and reduced physical effort.

However, how the dimensional experience of anhedonia correlates with the subcomponents of reward processing in daily life is unknown. Recently we have begun to use experience sampling methodology to assess the human reward process in adolescents with depression in daily life using a smart phone app. The goal is to reveal the determinants of active behaviour and positive mood in real life in young people. Knowing this can help us develop new interventions for anhedonia.

Title

Smartphone Digital Psychiatry: Understanding New Data, Clinical Oppurtunites, and Marketplace Apps

Biography

John Torous, MD MBI is director of the digital psychiatry division, in the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School affiliated teaching hospital, where he also serves as a staff psychiatrist and assistant professor. He has a background in electrical engineering and computer sciences and received an undergraduate degree in the field from UC Berkeley before attending medical school at UC San Diego. He completed his psychiatry residency, fellowship in clinical informatics, and master's degree in biomedical informatics at Harvard. Dr. Torous is active in investigating the potential of mobile mental health technologies for psychiatry and has published over 200 peer reviewed articles and 5 books chapters on the topic. He serves as editor-in-chief for JMIR Mental Health, web editor for JAMA Psychiatry, currently leads the American Psychiatric Association’s Health IT Committee, and is a senior member in IEEE.

Visit John Torous' website