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Bianca Leonard

@biancaleonard.bsky.social
23 followers 17 following 11 posts

MD/PhD Candiate | UC Irvine | GR5, Yassa Lab | PRIME-LC

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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Taken together, these findings make the provocative suggestion that anhedonia may be adaptive in the face of the learning differences resulting from early-life unpredictability, in particular in environments where individuals face persistent threats in their pursuit of rewards.
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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Further analysis suggests that anhedonia supports optimal play in our task through an increase in threat feedback sensitivity. Participants with higher anhedonia scores were more likely to choose “wait” following a surprising robbery event by the Zorn predator.
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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Anhedonia, on the other hand, *increased* adherence to the optimal survival policy, by reducing overharvesting and promoting threat avoidance.
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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Consistent with prior work, high-ELU individuals were less likely to make optimal decisions in this task, in a sex-dependent manner.
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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
We developed a novel motivational conflict task that can identify distinct influences of ELU and anhedonia on choice.
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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
How do early life experiences, such as unpredictability (ELU) affect decisions? ELU has substantial impact on mental health–in particular, increasing the incidence of anhedonia. Our work asks why this might be: Does anhedonia moderate the effects of ELU on behavior?
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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
New preprint! “Anhedonia buffers the effects of early-life unpredictability on threat-reward decision making” w\ @malejandra.bsky.social, Yifan Zhang, @mikeyassa.bsky.social, @aaronbornstein.bsky.social & many more! 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
One week until my PhD defense! Please join me next Friday, as I discuss my research on the neurobiology of anhedonia following early life unpredictability in adolescent and young adult cohorts using neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience techniques. Register here: uci.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
See you tonight! Here to chat about motivational conflict, early life adversity, anhedonia, and more 💡
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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
Publishing highlight of 2025, getting to look at PVT neurons under the microscope and co-first-authoring this paper :D
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Reposted by Bianca Leonard
aaron bornstein @aaronbornstein.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
I think these findings raise interesting questions about the adaptive function of anhedonic attitudes. Find @biancaleonard.bsky.social and myself to learn more!
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Reposted by Bianca Leonard
aaron bornstein @aaronbornstein.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
#ACNP2026 - Wednesday afternoon @biancaleonard.bsky.social will present a computational model-driven motivational conflict challenge that identifies novel, *opposing* influences of early-life unpredictability and anhedonia @mikeyassa.bsky.social @hartleylabnyu.bsky.social @malejandra.bsky.social
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Bianca Leonard @biancaleonard.bsky.social · 28/08/2024
📰👀 What does a chunk of thalamus have to do with mental health? Find out in my 1st PhD first-author paper✨about functional connectivity between the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) and nucleus accumbens in young adults with anhedonia. sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Anhedonia is associated with higher functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and paraventricular nucleus of thalamus
Anhedonia stands as a life-threatening transdiagnostic feature of many mental illnesses, most notably major depression and involves neural circuits fo…
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Reposted by Bianca Leonard
Sophia Levis, MD, PhD @sclevis.bsky.social · 04/12/2023
My good friend and inspiring colleague Bianca @biancaleonard.bsky.social sharing her work at #ACNP2023 on imaging the PVT in humans and exploring its role in adversity-induced changes in reward behaviors at yesterday’s hot topics session! Check out her poster on Tuesday (T95)!
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