Research Interests - Jack Nitschke
My research examines the neuroscience of emotion and affective disorders. One of my research goals is to identify the neural circuits involved in distinct forms of anxiety and depression and their comorbidity in an attempt to address the diagnostic heterogeneity so prevalent among individuals with mood and anxiety disorders and to inform treatment strategies. The majority of prior research in this area has treated anxiety and depression as global constructs, which has led to a potpourri of findings that make it difficult to determine the precise neurobiological concomitants involved.
The emphasis of my work is on characterizing the constituent elements that comprise these affective constructs. In service of that, my research has probed subtypes of anxiety and depression, psychometrically and physiologically distinguishable affective dimensions, and laboratory-based models of anticipatory and reactivity processes.
Building on my previous work investigating cortical brain function in anxiety and depression using EEG and neuropsychological methods, my postdoctoral fellowship allowed me the opportunity to learn and employ additional methodologies – fMRI, PET, eye-blink startle, and EEG source localization via LORETA – to further interrogate the brain circuits involved in anxiety and depression.
My current research includes an event-related fMRI study that successfully distinguished brain circuits activated during the anticipation of and reactivity to aversive pictures. We are currently employing the same fMRI paradigm with generalized anxiety disorder patients, with the hypothesis that they will exhibit functional abnormalities in the anticipation circuit that will resolve following successful pharmacological treatment. Both of these projects are part of my NIMH K Award.
I am also conducting research that will help to uncover the neural circuitry of positive emotion, which has received far less attention than negative emotion. A major obstacle for researchers in this area has been the challenge of eliciting robust positive emotion reliably across subjects in a physiological laboratory setting. I was recently awarded a grant by the Fetzer Institute for research plans elaborating on our previous block-design fMRI study imaging new mothers while they viewed photographs of their own infants.
On a separate front, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab and I are currently writing up scalp EEG findings of more left than right frontal activity accompanying high levels of well-being. Finally, of further relevance to the general theme of health that courses through all my research endeavors, we are in the design and pilot phases of an event-related fMRI study investigating the brain structures involved in the placebo effect.