Deanna Barch, chair of the psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences and the Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine, received a $554,195 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for computational psychiatry research.
Computational psychiatry allows researchers to isolate specific mechanisms that determine behavior, bridging the gap between pathophysiology and psychopathology. However, there are several hurdles in transitioning the tools from the lab to the clinic.
Barch’s research will test the idea that computational metrics have enhanced validity and sensitivity relative to standard performance metrics in key psychiatric and nonpsychiatric populations. It also will establish and optimize the psychometrics of the computational metrics so they can be used to develop treatments and in longitudinal and genetic studies.