CTN: Quentin Huys (Seminar Speaker)

Title: Translating computational mechanisms to clinical applications

Computational psychiatry is a rapidly growing field attempting to translate advances in computational neuroscience and machine learning into improved outcomes for patients suffering from mental illness. In this lecture, I will provide an overview over recent approaches for translating computational research into an understanding of symptoms, and mechanisms of treatments.  I will start with two studies taking a computational approach to understanding symptoms of depression and anxiety: the selection of thoughts and the derivation of meaning and pleasure. I will then describe a recent series of studies which take a computational approach to understanding the active components of psychotherapy, and finally finish with an applied example, examining  mechanisms and predictors of relapse after antidepressant discontinuation.  Overall, I will hope to clarify the role computational approaches can play in identifying mechanisms, and in harnessing these mechanisms for therapeutic purposes.