Bridging Brain, Behavior, and Digital Tools in the Study of Depression and Chronic Pain

Negative affect–related conditions, including depression, anxiety, and chronic pain, are leading contributors to disability worldwide, particularly among women. Developing strategies for their assessment and treatment is therefore a critical scientific priority. This talk will present studies integrating experimental, epidemiological, and digital approaches to advance understanding of these conditions.

I will briefly describe experimental work on empathy for pain and epidemiological research on chronic pain trajectories, highlighting sociodemographic factors (e.g., sex, age, lifestyle) and brain microstructural features associated with persistence and recovery.

The main focus will be on digital mental health methods for assessing and treating mood and anxiety disorders. Digital tools offer scalable, cost-effective, and ecologically valid approaches, enhancing accessibility and enabling high-resolution symptom monitoring. I will present findings from (i) a fully online, gamified task assessing distinct domains of inhibitory control, with potential applications in training, and (ii) a daily ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study tracking self-reported mood, stress, and motivation over 30 days in a large sample of healthy controls and patients with mood and anxiety disorders. Preliminary results highlight variability in self-reported symptoms as a marker of affective dysregulation across sex and clinical groups.

Together, these studies underscore the importance of investigating negative affect–related conditions through multiple approaches and highlight the promise of digital methods for developing scalable tools to support mental health assessment and intervention.

Giada Dirupo est invitée par Michael Pereira.