A5091862994- Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Stress Responses and Cortisol
- Mental Health Research Topics
- Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Resilience and Mental Health
- Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Optimism, Hope, and Well-being
- Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Stress and Burnout Research
- Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Treatment of Major Depression
- Neural dynamics and brain function
- Hearing, Cochlea, Tinnitus, Genetics
- Tryptophan and brain disorders
- Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Clinical Reasoning and Diagnostic Skills
- Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Studies
- Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Face Recognition and Perception
- Hearing Loss and Rehabilitation
- Receptor Mechanisms and Signaling
University College London
2015-2024
National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery
2015-2019
University College Lahore
2019
Google (United States)
2017
BackgroundAnxiety disorders are associated with disruptions in both emotional processing and decision making. As a result, anxious individuals often make decisions that favor harm avoidance. However, this bias could be driven by enhanced aversion to uncertainty about the outcome (e.g., risk) or negative outcomes loss). Distinguishing between these possibilities may provide better cognitive understanding of anxiety hence inform treatment strategies.MethodsTo address question, unmedicated...
Serious and debilitating symptoms of anxiety are the most common mental health problem worldwide, accounting for around 5% all adult years lived with disability in developed world. Avoidance behavior-avoiding social situations fear embarrassment, instance-is a core feature such anxiety. However, as many other psychiatric biological mechanisms underlying avoidance remain unclear.Reinforcement learning models provide formal testable characterizations decision making; here, we examine these...
Abstract Reports of sensory disturbance, such as loudness sensitivity or sound intolerance, are ubiquitous in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) but a mechanistic explanation for these perceptual differences is lacking. Here we tested adaptation to loudness, process that regulates incoming input, adults with ASD and matched controls. Simple (SLA) fundamental adaptive reduces the subjective quiet steady-state sounds environment over time, whereas induced (ILA) means generating reduction perceived...
Abstract Background Mood and anxiety disorders are ubiquitous but current treatment options ineffective for many sufferers. Moreover, a number of promising pre-clinical interventions have failed to translate into clinical efficacy in humans. Improved treatments unlikely without better animal–human translational pipelines. Here, we rodent measure negative affective bias humans, exploring its relationship with (1) pathological mood symptoms (2) transient induced anxiety. Methods Adult...
Perceptual constancy strongly relies on adaptive gain control mechanisms, which shift perception as a function of recent sensory history. Here we examined the extent to individual differences in magnitude adaptation aftereffects for social and non-social directional cues are related autistic traits sensitivity healthy participants (Experiment 1); also whether is differentially impacted adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) relative neurotypical (NT) controls 2). In Experiment 1,...
Response to stress or external threats is a key factor in mood and anxiety disorder aetiology. Current measures of anxious responding are limited because they largely rely on retrospective self-report. Objectively quantifying individual differences threat response would be valuable step towards improving our understanding vulnerability. Our goal therefore develop reliable, objective, within-subject 'stress-test' responding. To this end, we examined threat-potentiated performance an...
Studying the effects of experimentally induced anxiety in healthy volunteers may increase our understanding mechanisms underpinning disorders. Experimentally stress (via threat unpredictable shock) improves accuracy at withholding a response on sustained attention to task (SART), and separate studies classify fearful faces, creating an affective bias. Integrating these findings, participants two public science engagement events ( n = 46, 55) were recruited explore version SART. We...
Abstract Anxiety involves the anticipation of aversive outcomes and can impair neurocognitive processes, such as ability to recall faces encoded during anxious state. It is important precisely delineate determine replicability these effects using causal state anxiety inductions in general population. This study therefore aimed replicate prior research on distinct impacts threat-of-shock-induced encoding recognition stage emotional face processing, a large asymptomatic sample ( n = 92). We...
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are used for the treatment of several conditions including anxiety disorders, but basic neurobiology function remains unclear. The amygdala and prefrontal cortex strongly innervated by serotonergic projections have been suggested to play an important role in expression. However, behaviour SSRI-mediated neurobiological changes remain incompletely understood.
Abstract Dysfunctional memory processes are widely reported in anxiety disorders, but the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms unclear. Recent work shows that impact of on depends context and modality. For instance, threat shock, a translational within-subject induction, has been shown to impair encoding facial stimuli, while improving spatial working (WM) accuracy. The present study aimed delineate neural circuitry regulating these opposing behavioural effects. Thirty-three healthy...
Abstract Background Mood and anxiety disorders are ubiquitous but current treatment options ineffective for large numbers of sufferers. Moreover, recent years have seen a number promising pre-clinical interventions fail to translate into clinical efficacy in humans. Improved treatments unlikely without better animal-human translational pipelines. Here, we directly adapt–i.e. back-translate - rodent measure negative affective bias humans, explore its relationship with a)pathological mood...
Abstract Serious and debilitating symptoms of anxiety are the most common mental health problem worldwide, accounting for around 5% all adult ‘years lived with disability’ in developed world. Avoidance behaviour –avoiding social situations fear embarrassment, instance–is a core feature such anxiety. However, as many other psychiatric symptoms, biological mechanisms underlying avoidance remain unclear. Reinforcement-learning models provide formal testable characterizations decision-making;...
Abstract Response to stress is a key factor in mood and anxiety disorder aetiology. Current measures of stress-response are limited because they largely rely on retrospective self-report. Objectively quantifying individual differences response would be valuable step towards improving our understanding vulnerability. Our goal develop reliable, objective, within-subject probe response. To this end, we examined stress-potentiated performance an inhibitory control task from baseline 2-4 weeks...
Studying the effects of experimentally induced anxiety in healthy volunteers may increase our understanding mechanisms underpinning disorders. Prior work has shown that (via threat unpredictable shock) improves accuracy at withholding a response on Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), and separate studies classify fearful faces, creating an affective bias. Integrating these findings, this study participants (N=47) public science engagement event were recruited explore version SART....
Studying the effects of experimentally induced anxiety in healthy volunteers may increase our understanding mechanisms underpinning disorders. Prior work has shown that (via threat unpredictable shock) improves accuracy at withholding a response on Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), and separate studies classify fearful faces, creating an affective bias. Integrating these findings, this study participants (N=47) public science engagement event were recruited explore version SART....