John JB Allen

John JB Allen

Professor, Psychology
Distinguished Professor
Professor, BIO5 Institute
Member of the General Faculty
Professor, Neuroscience - GIDP
Member of the General Faculty
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 621-7448

Work Summary

Depression is a major health problem that is often chronic or recurrent. Existing treatments have limited effectiveness, and are provided wihtout a clear indication that they will match a particular patient's needs. In this era of precision medicine, we strive to develop neurally-informed treatments for depression and related disorders.

Research Interest

Dr. Allen’s research spans several areas, but the main focus is the etiology and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. His work focuses on identifying risk factors for depression using electroencephalographic and autonomic psychophysiological measures, especially EEG asymmetry, resting state fMRI connectivity, and cardiac vagal control. Based on these findings, he is developing novel and neurally-informed treatments for mood and anxiety disorders, including Transcranial Ultrasound, EEG biofeedback, and Transcranial Direct Current and Transcranial Alternating Current stimulation. Other work includes understanding how emotion and emotional disorders influence the way we make decisions and monitor our actions. Keywords: Depression, Neuromodulation, EEG, Resting-state fMRI

Publications

Harmon-Jones, E., & J., J. (2001). The role of affect in the mere exposure effect: Evidence from psychophysiological and individual differences approaches. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(7), 889-898.

Abstract:

Affective models of the mere exposure effect propose that repeated exposure to a stimulus increases the positive affect or reduces the negative affect toward the stimulus, whereas recent cognitive models propose that affect is not involved in the mere exposure effect. To test these competing predictions, participants repeatedly viewed photographs of women's faces and then viewed these women again (familiar) and novel women (unfamiliar) while facial muscle region activity and brain activity were recorded. Familiar stimuli were rated as more likable and they evoked more zygomatic (cheek) muscle region activity than unfamiliar stimuli. Interactions with individual differences occurred. Persons reporting less positive affect and persons reporting more negative affect at baseline evidenced more zygomatic activity to the familiar than to the unfamiliar. Persons with relatively less left frontal cortical activation at baseline evidenced a tendency toward a greater mere exposure effect. These results suggest that repeatedly exposing persons to nonreinforced stimuli increases their positive affective reactions to those stimuli.

J., J., Harmon-Jones, E., & Cavender, J. H. (2001). Manipulation of frontal EEG asymmetry through biofeedback alters self-reported emotional responses and facial EMG. Psychophysiology, 38(4), 685-693.

PMID: 11446582;Abstract:

Individual differences in resting asymmetrical frontal brain activity have been found to predict subsequent emotional responses. The question of whether frontal brain asymmetry can cause emotional responses has yet to be addressed. Biofeedback training designed to alter the asymmetry of frontal brain activity was therefore examined. Eighteen right-handed female participants were randomly assigned to receive biofeedback training designed to increase right frontal alpha relative to left frontal alpha (n = 9) or to receive training in the opposite direction (n = 9). Five consecutive days of biofeedback training provided signals of reward or nonreward depending on whether the difference between right (F4) and left (F3) frontal alpha exceeded a criterion value in the specified direction. Systematic alterations of frontal EEG asymmetry were observed as a function of biofeedback training. Moreover, subsequent self-reported affect and facial muscle activity in response to emotionally evocative film clips were influenced by the direction of biofeedback training.

Stewart, J. L., Coan, J. A., Towers, D. N., & Allen, J. J. (2014). Resting and task-elicited prefrontal EEG alpha asymmetry in depression: support for the capability model. Psychophysiology, 51, 446--455.
Smith, E. E., Zambrano-Vazquez, L., & Allen, J. J. (2016). Patterns of alpha asymmetry in those with elevated worry, trait anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms: A test of the worry and avoidance models of alpha asymmetry. Neuropsychologia, 85, 118-126.
Allen, J., & Allen, J. J. (2008). Not devoid of forensic potential, but... The American journal of bioethics : AJOB, 8(1).