# Behavioral Testing and Clinical Assessment Core (B)

> **NIH NIH P50** · PRINCETON UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $403,247

## Abstract

CORE B – Behavioral testing and clinical assessment
The overarching aim of Core B is to provide a harmonized infrastructure for human subjects research in
support of Projects P1-P3. Each of these projects proposes to dissect the process of latent cause inference in
human health and mental illness by probing multiple behavioral signatures of this process in: categorization
tasks (P1), event segmentation tasks (P1), and learning tasks such probabilistic decision making (P2) and
extinction (P3; paralleling work proposed in the animal project, P4). The goal of Core B is to facilitate
behavioral testing so as to optimally measure our constructs of interest at the level of individual phenotypes:
each participant's computational latent cause inference phenotype and clinical mental health symptom
phenotype. We aim to streamline recruitment of all study samples (clinical and non-clinical) and deployment
of experiment software for remote testing, so as to remove the traditional recruitment and clinical evaluation
bottlenecks characteristic of this type of research.
Towards these goals, we will make use of and expand on existing infrastructure. We will develop a Center-
specific instantiation of NivTurk, our software application for serving remote experiments to participants
effectively and efficiently, and expand its capabilities to enhance scientific rigor and use with potential
participants of varying cognitive abilities and backgrounds (Aim 1). We will also expand the scope and reach
of the Rutgers-Princeton Center for Computational Cognitive NeuroPsychiatry (CCNP), a clinical research
center co-directed by Core Leads Konova and Niv that is dedicated to computational psychiatry research, by
building a research registry of pre-screened and clinically assessed potential participants with the conditions of
interest in the planned research studies (Aim 2). In addition, we will develop and standardize a reliable battery
of cognitive tasks that will allow all studies in the Center to control for covariates of no interest (Aim 3), and in
consultation with clinical staff at the CCNP, a battery of psychiatric self-report instruments (Aim 4). These
tools and standards will unify assessments across the Center, enhancing rigor and reproducibility of all Center
studies in humans, and allowing for cross-study and cross-Project analyses in Core C.
Importantly, to ensure that research in the Center is conducted in a way that is respectful, inclusive, and
ethical, and following recent guidelines for mental health research, we will consult with an advisory board of
people with lived experience with the psychopathologies that are the focus of the Center (anxiety, OCD,
alcohol use disorder, schizophrenia) in shaping the products of Aims 1, 3 and 4.
Through accomplishing its aims, Core B will provide an unprecedented infrastructure for the proposed
Projects, as well as a valuable resource for future large-scale clinical computational psychiatric studies,
including in remote...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10862342
- **Project number:** 1P50MH136296-01
- **Recipient organization:** PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Anna Borisova Konova
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $403,247
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-08-12 → 2029-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10862342

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10862342, Behavioral Testing and Clinical Assessment Core (B) (1P50MH136296-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-12 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10862342. Licensed CC0.

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