797: Examining How Our Brains Make Decisions About Investing Effort and the Impacts of Mental Illness - Dr. Michael Treadway

Dr. Michael Treadway is the Winship Distinguished Research Professor in Psychology and Director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychology at Emory University. He is also affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory. One of the aims of Michael’s lab is to investigate how the brain makes decisions about where to invest your effort and whether something you want is worth the work it will take to get it. The second aim of Michael’s research is to examine this process in people with conditions like major depression. His goal is to understand how the relevant circuitry in the brain typically works, and how the circuitry changes in depression, leading to a different set of decisions. This work has the potential to help identify new targets for interventions. Outside of science, Michael and his wife love spending time with their two young children and playing games together, particularly card games. He also enjoys playing the piano, listening to music, and going to live music performances. Michael received his PhD in clinical psychology from Vanderbilt University and completed his clinical internship and post-doctoral fellowship at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He joined the faculty at Emory in 2015. Michael has received numerous awards and honors in his career, including the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution in the area of Psychopathology from the American Psychological Association (APA), the Randolph Blake Early Career Award from Vanderbilt University, the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the Early Career Impact Award from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS), and the Rising Star Award from the APS. In this interview, he shares more about his life and science.