Department of Psychiatry and Department of Psychology are pleased to invite you to a lunch time talk from Professor Qiang Luo visiting from Fudan University. Please find the details below:
Time: Thursday 16th October 12:30 – 13:40
Location: Herchel Smith Building, Robinson Way
Speaker: Professor Qiang Luo – Fudan University; Principal Investigator at the Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence (ISTBI)
Talk Title: Computational Mechanisms of Angry Face Processing in Depression: A Deep Neural Network Perturbation Approach
Talk Abstract: According to the Theory of Constructed Emotion, visual emotion codes in the brain are regularized by abstract emotion concepts from memory. While neuroimaging studies show that similar concepts elicit similar neural patterns—suggestive of predictive coding through error minimization—it remains unclear whether these codes are also shaped by developmental experience. Such experience-dependent specialization could enable efficient emotion recognition without constant memory system engagement, yet this mechanism is rarely investigated. Here, we introduce a deep neural network (DNN) framework to probe this process. First, we trained a concept-regularized DNN to model the brain’s visual emotion codes. Next, we perturbed its regularization strength to simulate impaired emotion processing in depression. From this mechanism, we derived a computational phenotype and validated its utility in population-based and clinical cohorts. Our findings illuminate how concept regularization underpins facial emotion recognition and its dysfunction in depression, offering a novel DNN-based lens for computational psychiatry.
The event is open and does not require signing up.
Posted on 08/10/2025
