Stewart A Shankman

• Ph.D. in clinical psychology
• Professor and Chief of Psychology at Northwestern University

Physical activity has a well-known positive effect on mood and often occurs outside in natural light. The specific effects of natural light exposure on mood are understudied, but clinically significant as it may reflect a widely accessible method to enhance mood. This study thus aimed to disentangle the effects of (a) physical activity and (b) natu...

The flanker task is a widely used measure of cognitive control abilities. Drift-diffusion modeling of flanker task behavior can yield separable parameters of cognitive control-related subprocesses, but the parameters’ psychometrics are not well-established. We examined the reliability and validity of four behavioral measures: (1) raw accuracy, (2)...

The transition to adolescence is a critical period for mental health development. Socio-experiential environments play an important role in the emergence of depressive symptoms with some adolescents showing more sensitivity to social contexts than others. Drawing on recent developmental neuroscience advances, we examined whether hippocampal volume...

Background: A relatively understudied but growing body of research indicates that individuals with a history of childhood trauma exhibit altered reward processing in adulthood. Research to date has focused on adversity broadly, with studies typically finding evidence of blunted response to rewards in adults with a history of childhood trauma. Objec...

Background. Mental health disorders are among the leading causes of disability in childhood and adolescence. Notably, mental health disorders commonly co-occur, indicating that critical mechanisms may relate to multiple forms of psychopathology. One potential transdiagnostic mechanism that has been examined in youth is inhibitory control. However,...

Background Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) or major depressive disorder (MDD), yet there is variability in clinical improvement. Though prior research suggests pre-treatment engagement of brain regions supporting cognitive reappraisal (e.g. dorsolateral prefrontal cortex [...

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) adolescents are at elevated risk for depression. This risk is especially pronounced among adolescents whose home environment is unsupportive or nonaffirming, as these adolescents may face familial rejection due to their identity. Therefore, it is critical to better understand the mechanisms underlying this risk by p...

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Ambulatory methods are useful tools to study physical and mental health in everyday life. While many studies show daily activity improves mood, the effects of daily light exposure on mood remain unknown. This study evaluated the effects of daily natural light exposure and activity on daily mood and evaluate whether depression mode...

Cloud computing enables small businesses to use computing resources more flexibly and efficiently, thereby gaining a competitive advantage and better adapting to market changes.-Cloud computing provides small businesses with many advantages, allowing them to operate more flexibly and efficiently. Here are some of the key benefits of cloud computing...

Objective Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious psychiatric illness associated with significant medical and psychiatric comorbidity and impairment. Theoretical models of AN and self‐report studies suggest that negative self‐evaluation (i.e., low self‐esteem) is related to the development and maintenance of AN. The goal of this study was to extend find...

Adolescence is among the most vulnerable period for the emergence of serious mental illnesses. Addressing this vulnerability has generated interest in identifying markers of risk for symptoms and opportunities for early intervention. Physical fitness has been linked to psychopathology and may be a useful risk marker and target for early interventio...

Sexual functioning is an important predictor of well-being and relationship satisfaction. Previous research indicates that several aspects of cognitive function are related to sex-related behaviors and functioning among individuals with sex-related disorders, neurological disorders, and in older adults; however, this has been relatively underexamin...

Background Cross sectional studies have identified linguistic correlates of major depressive disorder (MDD) in smartphone communication. However, it is unclear whether monitoring these linguistic characteristics can detect when an individual is experiencing MDD, which would facilitate timely intervention. Methods Approximately 1.2 million messages...

Up to 70% of patients with major depressive disorder present with psychomotor disturbance (PmD), but at the present time understanding of its pathophysiology is limited. In this study, we capitalized on a large sample of patients to examine the neural correlates of PmD in depression. This study included 820 healthy participants and 699 patients wit...

The ability to accurately identify and interpret others' emotions is critical for social and emotional functioning during adolescence. Indeed, previous research has identified that laboratory-based indices of facial emotion recognition and engagement with emotional faces predict adolescent mood states. Whether soci-oemotional information processing...

Adolescence is among the most vulnerable period for the emergence of serious mental illnesses. Addressing this vulnerability has generated interest in identifying markers of risk for symptoms and opportunities for early intervention. Physical fitness has been linked to psychopathology and may be a useful risk marker and target for early interventio...

Most adolescents with depression remain undiagnosed and untreated—missed opportunities that are costly from both personal and public health perspectives. A promising approach to detecting adolescent depression in real-time and at a large scale is through their social communication on the smartphone (e.g., text messages, social media posts). Past re...

The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) is a research framework introduced by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 2009 intended to direct mental health-related research and integrate findings from multiple fields of research into a unified model of neurobehavioral functioning and psychopathology. This chapter provides an overview of the t...

Background During adolescence, peer support has an increasingly important role in identity formation and well‐being. Prior research has identified that lack of social support from peers in adolescence is a potent risk factor for depression. Two ways that social support has been operationalized is by the number of one's friends (i.e., ‘quantity’) an...

Making effective decisions during approach-avoidance conflict is critical in daily life. Aberrant decision-making during approach-avoidance conflict is evident in a range of psychological disorders, including anxiety, depression, trauma-related disorders, substance use disorders, and alcohol use disorders. To help clarify etiological pathways and r...

Introduction: Disruptions in neural responses to reward are implicated in risk for Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). It is not clear whether these findings extend to those in remission from AUD and MDD, a critical question as studies of remission can (a) rule out effects due to current symptoms, and (b) can reveal pot...

Identifying risk markers for major depressive disorder (MDD) that persist into remission is key to address MDD's high rate of recurrence. Central to MDD recurrence are the disorder's negative information processing bias, such as heightened responses to errors, which may subsequently impair abilities to monitor performance and adjust behaviors based...

Suicidality is prevalent in Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Limited data indicate the reward positivity (RewP), a neurophysiological index of reward responsivity, and subjective capacity for pleasure may serve as brain and behavioral assays for suicide risk though this has yet to be examined in SAD or MDD in the c...

Abuse and neglect have detrimental consequences on emotional and cognitive functioning during childhood and adolescence, including error monitoring, which is a critical aspect of cognition that has been implicated in certain internalizing and externalizing psychopathologies. It is unclear, however, whether (a) childhood trauma has effects on error...

Background Post-stroke depressive symptoms are prevalent and impairing, and elucidating their course and risk factors is critical for reducing their public health burden. Previous studies have examined the course of post-stroke depression, but distinct depressive symptom dimensions (eg, somatic symptoms, negative affect [eg, sadness], anhedonia [eg...

Numerous studies have questioned the reliability and validity of borderline personality disorder's (BPD) categorical conceptualization. DSM-5 Section III's alternative trait-based model of BPD may better capture borderline pathology, but aspects of its validity should be further established. Thus, the authors examined whether a latent BPD factor de...

Measuring brain activity during fMRI tasks is one of the main tools to identify brain biomarkers of disease or neural substrates associated with specific symptoms. However, identifying correct biomarkers relies on reliable measures. Recently, poor reliability was reported for task‐based fMRI measures. The present study aimed to demonstrate the reli...

Background. Identifying risk markers for major depressive disorder (MDD) that persist into remission is key to address the high rates of recurrence in MDD. Central to MDD recurrence is the negative information processing bias, such as heightened responses to errors, which may subsequently impair one’s ability to monitor performance and adjust behav...

Numerous theoretical models suggest that inhibition difficulties-the inability to moderate automatic responses-contribute to the onset and/or maintenance of internalizing symptoms. Inhibition deficits and internalizing disorders run in families and share overlapping genetic risk factors, suggesting that inhibition deficits may be particularly progn...

Background Knowledge of the neural mechanisms underlying increased disease burden in the anxiety disorders that is unaccounted for by individual categorical diagnoses could lead to improved clinical care. Here, we tested the utility of a joint fMRI-EEG neurobiological profile characterized by overvaluation of negative stimuli (amygdala) in combinat...

Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is a transdiagnostic risk factor for internalizing psychopathology, and theoretical models suggest that RNT may maintain symptoms by interfering with psychophysiological habituation. The present study therefore examined associations between RNT and habituation within and between study sessions. Community members (...

Background The putamen has been implicated in depressive disorders, but how its structure and function increase depression risk is not clearly understood. We examine how putamen volume, neuronal density, and mood-modulated functional activity relate to family history and prospective course of depression. Methods The study includes 115 2nd and 3rd...

Reward-based reinforcement learning impairments are common in major depressive disorder, but it is unclear which aspects of reward-based reinforcement learning are disrupted in remitted major depression (rMDD). Given that the neurobiological substrates that implement reward-based RL are also strongly implicated in psychomotor retardation (PmR), the...

Psychomotor slowing is a key feature of depressive disorders. Despite its great clinical importance, the pathophysiology and prevalence across different diagnoses and mood states are still poorly understood. Actigraphy allows unbiased, objective, and naturalistic assessment of physical activity as a marker of psychomotor slowing. Yet, the true effe...

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by unprecedented levels of stress and threats in a variety of domains (e.g., health, livelihood). Individual differences in threat reactivity may explain why some individuals are at elevated risk for the development or maintenance of psychopathology during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article describes seve...

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by unprecedented levels of stress and threats in a variety of domains (e.g., health, livelihood). Individual differences in threat reactivity may explain why some individuals are at elevated risk for the development or maintenance of psychopathology during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article describes seve...

Depression recurrence is debilitating, and there is a pressing need to develop clinical tools that detect the reemergence of symptoms with the aim of bridging patients to treatment before recurrences. At baseline, remitted depressed adults (n = 22) and healthy controls (n = 24) were administered clinical interviews and completed self-report symptom...

Previous studies have shown that peer dysfunction in adolescence predicts depression in adulthood, even when controlling for certain individual- and/or family-level characteristics. However, these studies have not controlled for numerous potential familial confounders, precluding causal inferences. The present study therefore used a sibling compari...

Background Attentional bias to threat is a fundamental transdiagnostic component and potential vulnerability factor for internalizing psychopathologies. However, the measurement of attentional bias, such as traditional scores from the dot-probe paradigm, evidence poor reliability and do not measure intra-individual variation in attentional bias. M...

Individual differences in sensitivity to unpredictable threat may be a critical mechanism for internalizing psychopathology phenotypes. The present study examined whether the startle probe-elicited N100 and P300 during unpredictable threat – two event-related potentials indexing early and elaborative attentional processing of unpredictable threat –...

Background Identifying mechanisms of major depressive disorder (MDD) that continue into remission is critical, as this may contribute subsequent depressive episodes. Biobehavioral markers related to depressogenic self-referential processing biases have been identified in depressed adults. Thus, we investigated whether these risk factors persisted d...

Background: Motor abnormalities are strong transdiagnostic indicators of psychopathology risk that reflect emerging neural network abnormalities. Indeed, motor signs, such as motor slowing and agitation, are widely recognized as core features of both psychosis and depression. However, it is unclear whether these reflect shared or distinct etiology...

Background Prospective studies are needed to assess the influence of pre-pandemic risk factors on mental health outcomes following the COVID-19 pandemic. From direct interviews prior to ( T1 ), and then in the same individuals after the pandemic onset ( T2 ), we assessed the influence of personal psychiatric history on changes in symptoms and wellb...

Individuals with schizophrenia engage in more sedentary behavior than healthy controls, which is thought to contribute to multiple health adversities. Age, medication side effects and environment are critical determinants of physical activity in psychosis. While motor abnormalities are frequently observed in psychosis, their association with low ph...

The clinical presentation of anxiety may differ between Hispanics/Latinx (H/L) and non-H/L, although findings on ethnic differences in self-reported anxiety symptoms have been mixed. Fewer studies have focused on ethnic differences in quick and relatively automatic laboratory-assessed indicators of anxiety symptoms, which have the potential to be m...

Background: Reward-based reinforcement learning impairments are common in major depressive disorder, but it is unclear which reward-based reinforcement learning is disrupted in remitted major depression (rMDD). As the neurobiological substrates that implement reward-based RL are also strongly implicated in psychomotor retardation (PmR), the present...

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) response during attentional control in the context of task-irrelevant emotional faces is a promising biomarker of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) outcome in patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, it is unclear whether this biomarker extends to major depressive disorder (MDD) and is specific to CBT o...

The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) posits that psychopathology is a hierarchy of correlated dimensions. Numerous studies have examined the validity of these dimensions using bi-factor models, in which each disorder loads onto both a general and specific factor (e.g., internalizing, externalizing). Although bifactor models tend to...

Background: A history of childhood maltreatment predicts poorer functioning in several domains during childhood, including executive function (EF). While there is also evidence of poorer EF in adults with a history of childhood trauma, results are mixed. Notable limitations of previous research are (a) the use of single indicators of EF, and/or (b)...

Background Motor abnormalities, such as psychomotor agitation and retardation, are widely recognized as core features of depression. However, it is not currently known if motor abnormalities connote risk for depression. Methods Using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a nationally representative sample of youth (n=1...

Many studies have examined associations between neural and behavioral markers of attention to emotion and individual differences in affective functioning. However, the majority of these studies are cross-sectional, and examine associations between brain, behavior, and individual differences at one or two time-points, limiting our understanding of t...

Introduction : Prolonged attentional bias to threat (AB) is associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, it is unclear whether this relationship extends to early threat detection (elicited by masked stimuli) and/or varies if AB is measured during an aversive context. Methods : Two trauma-exposed samples of either intervention-see...

Deficits in social cognition and functioning are common in major depressive disorder (MDD). Still, no study into the pathophysiology of MDD has examined the social cognition-related neural pathways through which familial risk for MDD leads to depression and interpersonal impairments. Using resting-state fMRI, we applied a graph theoretical analysis...

Objective: Individuals with depression exhibit numerous interpersonal deficits. As effective use of gestures is critical for social communication, it is possible that depressed individuals’ interpersonal deficits may be due to deficits in gesture performance. The present study thus compared gesture performance of depressed patients and controls and...

The etiology of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is poorly understood, and identifying endophenotypes, or intermediate processes implicated in pathophysiology, for MDD may inform treatment and identification/prevention efforts. Impaired set-shifting and inhibition are commonly observed in MDD; however, few studies have examined they are endophenotyp...

Background Network analysis has been used to elucidate the relationships among depressive symptoms, but this approach has not been typically used in persons with stroke. Method Using a sample of 835 persons with stroke from Stroke Recovery in Underserved Populations 2005-2006 dataset, this study used network analysis to (1) examine changes in rela...

Introduction Disruptions in neural measures of reward responsiveness are implicated in risk for and the development of Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) in general, but it is not clear if this is also true for Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD). To date, no studies have examined neural reward responsiveness in cannabis users using EEG. Methods Cannabis user...

Affect dynamics reflect individual differences in how emotional information is processed, and may provide insights into how depressive episodes develop. To extend prior studies that examined affect dynamics in currently depressed individuals, the present study tested in 68 non-depressed young adults whether three well-established risk factors for m...

Psychopathology research has increasingly sought to study the etiology and treatment of individual symptoms, rather than categorical diagnoses. However, it is unclear whether commonly used measures have adequate psychometric properties for assessing individual symptoms. This study examined the test-retest reliability and familial concordance (an in...

Identifying neurobehavioral correlates of suicidal ideation can help detect those most vulnerable for suicide among high-risk groups, such as those with internalizing psychopathology. Individuals with elevated sensitivity to uncertain threat (U-threat) have a strong preference for known outcomes relative to unknown outcomes and often experience hig...

Background The network theory suggests that psychopathology may reflect causal relationships between individual symptoms. Several studies have examined cross‐sectional relationships between individual symptoms in youth. However, these studies cannot address the directionality of the temporal relationships hypothesized by the network theory. Therefo...

Motor abnormalities (e.g., dyskinesia, psychomotor slowing, neurological soft signs) are core features of schizophrenia that occur independent of drug treatment and are associated with the genetic vulnerability and pathophysiology for the illness. Among this list, psychomotor slowing in particular is one of the most consistently observed and robust...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a serious public health problem that has, at best, modest treatment response-potentially due to its heterogeneous clinical presentation. One way to parse the heterogeneity is to investigate the role of particular features of MDD, an endeavor that can also help identify novel and focal targets for treatment and pre...

Aberrant threat reactivity has been implicated in the pathophysiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD); however, the literature on this association is mixed. One factor that may contribute to this inconsistent association is differences in severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSSs) across studies, but no studies have tested this hypot...

Low perceived distress tolerance (DT), a trait-like individual difference factor reflecting one’s perceived ability to withstand aversive affective states, has been linked with current internalizing and substance use disorders (SUDs). However, perceived DT has not been systematically evaluated as a familial, transdiagnostic vulnerability factor for...

The popularity of network analysis in psychopathology research has increased exponentially in recent years. Yet, little research has examined the replicability of cross-sectional psychopathology network models, and those that have used single items for symptoms rather than multiitem scales. The present study therefore examined the replicability and...

Abnormal social or reward processing is associated with several mental disorders. Although most studies examining reward processing have focused on monetary rewards, recent research also has tested neural reactivity to social rewards (e.g., positive social feedback). However, the majority of these studies only include two feedback valences (e.g., a...

Childhood trauma may contribute to adult maladjustment by causing information processing biases. The present study examined whether childhood trauma severity was associated with attention bias in adulthood and whether these relationships varied depending on whether attention bias was assessed under safety or threat conditions. Adults with a history...

Studies suggest that individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD) display abnormal neural error-processing, measured via the error-related negativity (ERN). The nature of the error-related abnormalities in AUD is unclear, however, as prior research has yielded discrepant findings. In addition, no study to date has attempted to characterize the dispo...

Mechanisms and predictors for the successful treatment of anxiety and depression have been elusive, limiting the effectiveness of existing treatments and curtailing the development of new interventions. In this study, we evaluated the utility of three widely used neural probes of emotion (experience, regulation, and perception) in their ability to...

Non-suicidal self-injury is a risk factor for suicidal behavior, particularly in females. Two prominent theories of suicide suggest that habituation to the psychophysiological aversiveness of NSSI is a mechanism by which NSSI exposure may lead to increased risk for suicide. Several laboratory studies examining the relationship between physiological...

Introduction: Neuropsychological tests are designed to assay brain function via performance measurements. Many tests corresponding to visual and motor cortex function have been validated. Tests probing reward circuitry, including the ventral striatum (VS), could benefit assessment of numerous neurological and psychiatric disorders in which reward...

Heightened responsivity to unpredictable, and perhaps predictable, threat characterizes some internalizing disorders and may be vulnerability factors for psychopathology as well. However, few studies have directly tested whether individual differences in unpredictable and/or predictable threat responding longitudinally predict symptoms of psychopat...

Reduced responsiveness to reward has been associated with both risk‐prone and risk‐averse behavior, common features of externalizing and internalizing psychopathology, respectively. Thus, evidence has suggested a potential quadratic relationship (i.e., inverted U) between reward sensitivity and risk‐taking propensity. Blunted response to reward com...

Despite the clinical impact of motor symptoms such as agitation or retardation on the course of depression, these symptoms are poorly understood. Novel developments in the field of instrumentation and mobile devices allow for dimensional and continuous recording of motor behavior in various settings, particularly outside the laboratory. Likewise, t...