Dr. Poornima Kumar has launched a new group with in the Center for Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Research. Her COMputational Psychopathology (COMP) group will seek to understand how we make decisions in our day-to-day lives to maximize reward and minimize punishment, and how this can go awry in individuals suffering from psychiatric illnesses. Specifically, they will investigate the neural, molecular, behavioral correlates of reinforcement learning and decision-making using neuroimaging, computational models, and machine learning statistical approaches. The long-term goal is to identify individual-specific treatment based on these correlates to improve outcomes for individuals who suffer from psychiatric disorders.
Congratulations, Poornima!