Confirmed speakers
Confirmed Speakers
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Professor Nashat Abumaria, PhD.
Professor and Principal Investigator
State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology
MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science
Institutes of Brain Science
Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, China
Professor Jonas Everaert, PhD.
Associate Professor
TSB: Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences
TSB: Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology
University of Tilburg, The Netherlands
Title: Resolving ambiguity in depression: The role of Interpretation bias and inflexible belief updating in the lab and everyday daily life
Abstract: Depression is characterized by difficulties in interpreting ambiguous social situations. In this talk, I will present empirical evidence from lab studies and experience sampling research demonstrating biases toward generating more negative and fewer positive interpretations of ambiguity, along with difficulties in updating initial negative interpretations when faced with contradictory positive evidence. Additionally, I will discuss socio-affective pathways through which these biased and inflexible interpretations contribute to the development and persistence of depressive symptoms.
Bio: Jonas received his PhD in 2015 from Ghent University. Before joining Tilburg University, he conducted postdoctoral research at KU Leuven, Ghent University, and Yale. In 2021, Jonas received the Rising Star Award from the Association of Psychological Science. Additionally, Jonas is an honorary research fellow at King's College London.
Professor Łukasz Gawęda, PhD.
Deputy Director for Science
Experimental Psychopathology Lab (Head)
Institute of Psychology
Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
Dr Beata Godlewska, PhD.
Clinical researcher, honorary consultant psychiatrist
Department of Psychiatry
Oxford University
Oxford, UK.
Dr Justyna Hinchcliffe, PhD.
Senior Research Associate
School of Physiology, Pharmacology & Neuroscience
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Dr Sakumi Iki, PhD
JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow
Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior
Kyoto University, Japan
Dr Megan Jackson, PhD.
Senior Research Associate
School of Physiology, Pharmacology & Neuroscience
University of Bristol, UK.
Megan is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol. Her research utilises innate, species-specific foraging behaviour in mice to study motivated behaviours. Using a combination of tools including pharmacological manipulations, phenotypic models and neuronal recording, Megan aims to understand the pathways involved in innate motivation and its divergence from effort-based operant conditioning paradigmsApathy is a prevalent syndrome characterised by a deficit in motivation alongside emotional blunting. It is shared across multiple neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, as well as otherwise healthy ageing. A greater understanding of this syndrome may lead to improved treatment outcomes across multiple patient populations. At the preclinical level, motivational state is traditionally assessed in operant tests, and requires food restriction to motivate the rodent to perform a conditioned response. Animals monitored in more naturalistic environments may display more ethologically-relevant behaviours of greater translational value. Here, I will present the Effort Based Forage (EBF) task, which is based on the intrinsic drive to forage for nesting material. In this task, motivated behaviour is quantified by the amount of nesting material foraged from a custom designed ‘bedding box’, which requires varying degrees of effort to obtain. The task provides a rapid readout of motivational state without the need for food/water restriction or prolonged training times. It has shown sensitivity to a range of pharmacological manipulations, with surprising differences in direction of effect to an effort-based operant conditioning task. In this talk I will present these differences and discuss what this may mean in the context of translational research.
Professor Michael T. Mendl, PhD.
M.A., Ph.D.(Cantab.), BA (Hons)
Professor of Animal Behaviour and Welfare, Bristol Veterinary School
Animal Welfare and Behaviour
Bristol Neuroscience, Bristol, UK
Professor Emma Robinson, PhD.
School of Physiology, Pharmacology & Neuroscience
Faculty of Life Sciences
University of Bristol, UK
Prof. David Slattery, PhD.
Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy
Goethe University in Frankfurt,
Frankfurt, Germany
More invited speakers will be announced soon!
Dofinansowano z programu „Doskonała nauka” Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego
