Edward Bernat

Dr. Bernat’s research focuses on brain mechanisms that underlie individual differences in cognitive and affective processing. This involves basic science work developing measures for critical mechanisms, and clinical-translational work assessing how these mechanisms relate to psychopathology and individual differences. Currently funded work includes a focus on substance use among lower SES minority individuals in a inpatient DC residential drug treatment facility. Broadly, projects there focus on brain mechanisms underlying substance use and psychopathology, and change in these mechanisms during treatment. For example, one thread focuses on the relationship between trauma and substance use, and development of brief trauma interventions. Another thread is focused on changes in drug and other cue-reactivity during the initial period of abstinence (cue-incubation), and how this can index vulnerability to relapse. Emerging transdiagnostic (dimensional) models of psychopathology play a prominent role in the inferences involved in this work. The most common model involves three primary factors: 1) impulse control (externalizing) problems such as substance dependence, antisocial behavior, and psychopathy, 2) internalizing problems involving anxiety and depression, and 3) the shared variance between internalizing and externalizing (referred to as a psychopathology factor; p-factor).