Education

Master of Science in Research in Behavior and Cognition, University of Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain)
Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Spanish, Gettysburg College (Pennsylvania, United States)

Research interests

My research aims to elucidate the neural correlates of social reward in young adults diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Specifically, I am developing a novel paradigm with ecologically valid types of social reward based on social media (e.g., “Likes” and comments adapted from Instagram), and I am using scalp EEG to identify event-related potentials and oscillations that may be associated with alterations in the anticipation and consumption of social rewards in BPD. By identifying alterations in the neural processing of social reward in BPD (e.g., a negative bias in decoding social rewards), this project may help design better targeted interventions to make BPD patients aware of their affective biases and to promote more favorable interpretations of social feedback. This may help make social interactions less painful for young adults suffering from BPD, which may in turn reduce a potential trigger for self-injury.

Publications

Berenson, K., Van De Weert, S., Nicolaou, S., Campoverde, C., Rafaeli, E., & Downey, G. (2020). Reward and punishment sensitivity in borderline and avoidant personality disorders. Journal of Personality Disorders, 34, 1-16. http://doi.org/10.1521/pedi_2020_34_475   

Briones-Buixassa, L., Alí, Í., Schmidt, C., Nicolaou, S., Pascual, J., Soler, J., & Vega, D. (2021). Predicting non-suicidal self-injury in young adults with and without borderline personality disorder: A multilevel approach combining ecological momentary assessment and self-report measures. Psychiatric Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-020-09875-7