Alexandre Y. Dombrovski, MD

  • Associate Professor, Psychiatry
  • Director, Decision Neuroscience and Psychopathology Lab

Phone

412-246-6143

E-mail

dombax@upmc.edu

Personal Website

website link

Education & Training

MD, Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy (1999)

Campus Address

728 Bellefield Tower

One-Line Research Description

My lab studies decision-making in people with depression, personality disorders, anxiety, and suicidal behavior

Our lab studies individual differences in reward learning and decision processes that contribute to psychopathology, including borderline personality, depression and suicide. We view these individual differences as parameters of neural computation. The lab’s theoretical interests are in the exploration/exploitation dilemma and in elaborating a formal learning theory account of interpersonal dysfunction. Our lab uses learning experiments, economic exchange games, functional neuroimaging, and computational modeling. We conduct large-scale studies of reward learning in behavior and of social decision-making in borderline personality disorder.  

Representative Publications

Brown VM, Wilson J, Hallquist MN, Szanto K, Dombrovski AY*. Ventromedial prefrontal value signals and functional connectivity during decision-making in suicidal behavior and impulsivity.  Neuropsychopharmacology, published online Feb. 8, 2020.

Dombrovski AY*, Hallquist MN, Brown VM, Wilson J, Szanto K. Value-Based Choice, Contingency Learning, and Suicidal Behavior in Mid- and Late-Life Depression. Biological Psychiatry. 2019 Mar 15;85(6):506–516. PMCID: PMC6380943

Hallquist MN*, Dombrovski AY* (equal contribution). Selective maintenance of value information helps resolve the exploration/exploitation dilemma. Cognition. 2019 Feb 1;183:226–243. PMCID: PMC6328060

Manning EE, Dombrovski AY, Torregrossa MM, Ahmari SE. Impaired instrumental reversal learning is associated with increased medial prefrontal cortex activity in Sapap3 knockout mouse model of compulsive behavior. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2018 Dec 26;1. PMCID: in process 

Chase HW, Kumar P, Eickhoff SB, Dombrovski AY*. Reinforcement learning models and their neural correlates: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Cognitive Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience. 2015; PMCID: PMC4437864 

Dombrovski AY, Szanto K, Clark L, Aizenstein HJ, Chase HW, Reynolds CF, Siegle GJ. Corticostriatothalamic reward prediction error signals and executive control in late-life depression. Psychological medicine. 2014 Oct 16;1–12. PMCID: PMC4380546 

Dombrovski AY, Szanto K, Clark L, Reynolds CF, Siegle GJ. Reward Signals, Attempted Suicide, and Impulsivity in Late-Life Depression. JAMA psychiatry. 2013 Aug 7;70(10):1020–1030. PMCID: PMC3859132

Dombrovski AY*, Luna B, Hallquist MN*. Differential reinforcement encoding along the hippocampal long axis helps resolve the explore-exploit dilemma. Nat Commun. 2020 26;11(1):5407. PMID: 33106508. PMCID: PMC7589536

Hallquist MN*, Dombrovski AY*. Selective Maintenance of Value Information Helps Resolve the Exploration/Exploitation Dilemma. Cognition 2019 Feb;183:226-243. PubMed PMID: 30502584. PMCID: PMC6328060.

Dombrovski AY, Hallquist MN, Brown VM, Wilson J, Szanto K. Value-Based Choice, Contingency Learning, and Suicidal Behavior in Mid- and Late-Life Depression. Biological Psychiatry. 2019 Mar 15;85(6):506–516. PMCID: PMC6380943

Dombrovski AY, Szanto K, Clark L, Reynolds CF, Siegle GJ. Reward signals, attempted suicide, and impulsivity in late-life depression. JAMA Psychiatry. 2013 Oct;70(10):1. PubMed PMID: 23925710; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3859132.

AY Dombrovski, MN Hallquist. Search for solutions, learning, simulation, and choice processes in suicidal behavior. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2021/5/18, e1561

PDF icon cv_dombrovski_a._som_oct_2019.pdf