Poornima is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an assistant neuroscientist at McLean Hospital. Her research interests focus on investigating the mechanisms through which humans learn and process reinforcements (both rewards and punishments) and how these processes might contribute to psychiatric disorders, particularly depression.
Recent Publications:
Bakker, J. M., Goossens, L., Kumar, P., Lange, I. M. J., Michielse, S., Schruers, K., Bastiaansen, J. A., Lieverse, R., Marcelis, M., van Amelsvoort, T., van Os, J., Myin-Germeys, I., Pizzagalli, D. A., & Wichers, M. (2018). From laboratory to life: associating brain reward processing with real-life motivated behaviour and symptoms of depression in non-help-seeking young adults. Psychological Medicine, 49(14), 2441–2451. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0033291718003446
Ironside, M., Kumar, P., Kang, M.-S., & Pizzagalli, D. A. (2018). Brain mechanisms mediating effects of stress on reward sensitivity. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 22, 106–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2018.01.016
Berghorst, L. H., Kumar, P., Greve, D. N., Deckersbach, T., Ongur, D., Dutra, S. J., & Pizzagalli, D. A. (2016). Stress and reward processing in bipolar disorder: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Bipolar Disorders, 18(7), 602–611. https://doi.org/10.1111/bdi.12444
Chase, H.W., Kumar, P., Eickhoff, S.B. et al. Reinforcement learning models and their neural correlates: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis (2015). Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 15, 435–459. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-015-0338-7
Kumar, P., Goer, F., Murray, L. et al (2018). Impaired reward prediction error encoding and striatal-midbrain connectivity in depression. Neuropsychopharmacol 43, 1581–1588. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-018-0032-x