The mechanistic role of expectation in the development of inflection signals in patients with major depression (B03)

• Subject Area: Biological Psychiatry
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 521379614

Altered expectations represent a cognitive-emotional mechanism of symptom change. The project investigates 250 patients with depression and 50 healthy controls using (i) behavioral and neural mechanisms of expectations; (ii) the impact of negative expectations on functional MRI correlates of anxiety, reward, and Theory of Mind; (iii) predictive power of expectation-change for clinical outcomes; and (iv) the effectiveness of an expectation intervention. It uses functional MRI data on expectation-related processes and associated dynamic network models to better understand symptom changes in patients with depression.

• DFG Programme: CRC/Transregios
• Subproject of: TRR 393: Trajectories of Affective Disorders: Cognitive-emotional Mechanisms of Symptom Change
• Applicant Institution: Philipps-Universität Marburg
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Hamidreza Jamalabadi; Professor Dr. Benjamin Straube, Ph.D.