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Poster E in Poster Session E: Thursday, August 6, 10:30 am – 12:15 pm, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Physical Stress Disrupts Maladaptive Emotion-Decision Loops in Depression with Non-Suicidal Self-Injury: Evidence from a Combinatorial Bandit Task

Guang-Yu Deng¹, Yang Xiao¹, Yahua Li¹, Haoyang Lu¹, Yi-Long Lu², Hang Zhang¹, Hao Yan¹; ¹Peking University, ²BigAI

Presenter: Guang-Yu Deng

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a maladaptive coping behavior that frequently co-occurs with major depressive disorder (MDD), yet its cognitive mechanisms under stress remain unclear. Using a four-armed combinatorial bandit task with acute physical stress manipulation, we examined decision-making in healthy controls (HC, n=48), MDD patients with NSSI (NSSI⁺, n=43), and MDD patients without NSSI (NSSI⁻, n=26). Model-free analyses suggested a maladaptive emotion–behavior loop in MDD, reflected in lower performance and reduced affective sensitivity to positive feedback. Stress further modulated reliance on a low-payoff default choice, particularly in NSSI⁺. Computational modeling indicated group differences in learning, exploration, and information decay, with stress effects varying across clinical subgroups. Together, these preliminary findings point to behavioral and computational signatures of NSSI in depression, while ongoing analyses will further assess their robustness and underlying mechanisms.

Topic Area: Development, Individual Differences & Clinical Populations