NCMD Seminar Series Presents the 'RELMED study' by Dr Elizabeth Qiu

This weeks seminar welcomed Dr Elizabeth Qiu, a postdoctoral researcher at UCL.

Dr Qiu did her PhD in cognitive neuroscience at University of Queensland where she studied the neural processing of emotional faces and its interplay with visual awareness and attention, using EEG. She is interested in understanding a wide range of cognitive processes from human and animal neural data.

During this seminar Dr Qiu explained how serotonin and dopamine are key brain chemicals involved in both depression and how we learn from rewards and punishments, a process called reinforcement learning (RL). However, it’s unclear how much these learning processes contribute to how antidepressants work. The Reinforcement Learning Mechanisms of Pharmacological Treatments for Depression (RELMED) study is investigating whether antidepressants that target serotonin and dopamine affect learning and motivation in different ways. To identify reliable neural correlates that are relevant for RL processes, they recorded brain activity (EEG) from healthy volunteers as they completed computerised tasks that measure learning and motivation. In this talk, Dr Qiu discussed how their early findings point to distinct neural patterns linked to different components of reinforcement learning, including learning from rewards and motivational control.

The RELMED study is due to come to Newcastle this year with NCMD member Dr Stuart Watson as principal investigator!

Thank you to Dr Elizabeth Qiu for delivering this interesting talk!