NPSA

Neuropsychoanalysis - Bridging psychoanalysis and the neurosciences

The Corrective Emotional Relationship, Social Navigation Encoding in the Hippocampus, and the Possibility of Capturing Meaningful Change in Relational Functioning in fMRI

An In-Person Only Event in NYC

Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, New York | Nov 5, 2023

 


Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience
The University of Arizona

and

Daniela Schiller, Ph.D.
Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry
Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai

Sunday, November 5
10 a.m. – 12 noon (EST)

Please click here to access the recording
and slides for this event.

Venue:
Goldwurm Auditorium
Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai
1425 Madison Avenue (at 98th Street)
New York City

Please note:  No CPD credits are being offered.

Psychoanalysis is not just the creation of a new narrative; it is also a new way of experiencing self with other. A series of unexpected, positive and transformative emotional experiences in interaction with the therapist, some of which can be recalled and described and some which cannot, may together constitute a corrective emotional relationship. From the perspective of systems neuroscience, the core mechanism of change associated with such experiences may be the reconsolidation of the emotion-laden schematic memories that comprise the internal working model of the social world. Although this systems neuroscience perspective has provided a new way to explain how change occurs, the aim of this presentation is to describe how it may be possible to demonstrate the neural instantiation of such change in fMRI. Dr. Lane will set the stage by reviewing the theory of enduring change in psychotherapy based on the phenomenon of memory reconsolidation and the integrated memory model, which consists of the interaction between episodic memory (new experiences), semantic memory (including schematic memory) and emotion. Dr. Schiller will then describe her work demonstrating the role of the hippocampus in mapping the dimensions of power and affiliation in social relationships. This is done with a video game in which a participant’s relationships are situated on these dimensions while being mapped using fMRI. She will then describe recent work demonstrating that this mapping can change as a result of corrective emotional experiences. The latter paradigm is now being implemented in fMRI and has the potential to capture the neural instantiation of changes in a person’s capacity for closer and more trusting relationships in the context of psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.  

Bios:

Richard D. Lane is Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. A clinical psychiatrist, psychodynamic psychotherapist and neuroscientist, he has specialized in the study of emotion and emotional awareness, their instantiation in the brain and body and their implications for mental health and systemic medical disorders. More recently he has focused on mechanisms of enduring change in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis due to memory-emotion interactions, which was the focus of a recent Fulbright fellowship in Vienna, Austria sponsored by the Sigmund Freud Museum.

Daniela Schiller is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York City. An Israeli native who originally came to the U.S. on a Fulbright Fellowship, she is Director of the Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at Mt Sinai. Her laboratory focuses on the neurocognitive mechanisms that make emotional memories malleable, allowing for memory modification and for the adaptive adjustment of emotional and social behavior. This work includes uncovering the neural representation of social relationships, their relevance to psychopathology and their malleability with new emotional experiences.

This presentation will refer to two papers published in 2015: