Anna Weinberg

Assistant Professor

Stewart Biological Sciences Bldg.
Room W8/33A, 514-398-4672
anna.weinberg at mcgill.ca
 

Research Areas

Research Summary

My research focuses on identifying biological pathways that give rise to disordered emotional experience. This involves using multiple methodologies, most often event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the activity of neural systems devoted to processing errors, emotional stimuli, and rewards, and working to establish reliable links between the function of these systems and behavior in healthy populations. With this basic research as a foundation, I seek to identify multiple abnormalities in these systems that characterize emotional dysfunction in a range of mood and anxiety (i.e., internalizing) disorders. In particular, I am interested in patterns of neural response that respect diagnostic boundaries between anxiety and unipolar mood disorders, and those which reflect more general liabilities that cut across disorders. However, it is not clear whether abnormalities in these systems contribute to the initial occurrence of an illness or emerge following onset. My recent efforts aim to establish whether these biological correlates of anxiety and depression represent stable vulnerability factors, or whether variation is instead linked to fluctuations in symptom severity.

Selected References

*Weinberg, A.,* Kotov, R., & Proudfit, G.H. (in press). Neural indicators of error processing in Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder. *Journal of Abnormal Psychology*.

*Weinberg, A.,* Venables, N.C., Proudfit, G.H., Patrick, C.J. (in press) Heritability of the Neural Response to Emotional Pictures:  Evidence from ERPs in an Adult Twin Sample. *Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience*.

*Weinberg, A.,* Ferri, J., & Hajcak, G. (2013) Interactions between Attention and Emotion: Insights from the Late Positive Potential. In M. Robinson, E. Watkins & E. Harmon-Jones (Eds.), *Handbook of Cognition and Emotion*. New York: Guilford Publications. pp. 35-54

*Weinberg, A.,* Klein, D.N. & Hajcak, G. (2012) Increased error-related brain activity distinguishes Generalized Anxiety Disorder with and without comorbid Major Depressive Disorder. *Journal of Abnormal Psychology*, 121, 885-896

Foti, D., *Weinberg, A.,* Dien, J., & Hajcak, G. (2011) Electrocortical activity in the basal ganglia differentiates rewards from non-rewards: Temporospatial principal components analysis and source localization of event-related potentials. *Human Brain Mapping. *32(12), 2207-2216.

*Weinberg, A.,* & Hajcak, G. (2011) Electrocortical evidence for vigilance-avoidance in Generalized Anxiety Disorder. *Psychophysiology*, 48, 842-851

Updated: August 2015
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