Different mental health disorders can present drastically different symptoms, but many share a common thread: disruptions to episodic memory, or the ability to recall personal experiences.
Because memory deficits are prevalent across so many clinical disorders, investigating episodic memory can illuminate how brain dysfunction contributes to mental health issues—an area of study that bridges the divide between clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience, said Associate Professor Deepu Murty, who leads the Adaptive Memory Lab in the College of Arts and Sciences.
To reach across that divide, Murty organized a workshop, “Episodic Memory as a Window to Understand Psychopathology,” during which students, faculty and staff in the Department of Psychology explored the role of episodic memory in mental health disorders.
The workshop, which took place May 16-17, featured presentations by neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists from across the US on topics ranging from the role of memory in the development of social anxiety to how prediction errors shape the structure and content of memory in health and disease.
“If you look across multiple psychological disorders, one of the most prominent behavioral deficits is a deficit in episodic memory,” Murty said. “ADHD, PTSD, psychosis, depression and anxiety are diverse clinical disorders, but one thing they all have in common is a disruption in episodic memory. Something about this system plays an important role in mental health.”
The event kicked off with a keynote lecture by Joseph Dunsmoor, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School. Additional presenters included Johanna Jarcho, associate professor of psychology at Temple University; Nina Rouhani, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California; and R. Alison Adcock, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University.
The speakers not only represented a variety of backgrounds, but included experts at different stages in their careers, from graduate students to senior faculty members, said Murty, who is chair of the department’s Committee for an Inclusive Community.
“These are cutting-edge scientists who are working at the boundary between clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience,” he said.
One of the primary goals of the workshop was to initiate a cross-disciplinary conversation between cognitive neuroscientists and clinical psychologists, he added.
“It’s unbelievable how little cross talk there is between cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology,” he said. “They both tackle many of the same questions, but they have different approaches to answering them. Real understanding comes from integrating ideas across psychology disciplines.”