Brandon Forys

PhD Student

brandon.forys@psych.ubc.ca

 
Education and Background
University of British Columbia, 2022, M.A.
University of British Columbia, 2020, B.A., Honours

I investigate the neural correlates and behavioural mechanisms that underpin how people interpret unpleasant situations and apply effort to avoid unpleasant situations. I am also interested in computationally modelling biases and affective states that contribute to evaluations of effort cost, with the aim of better understanding the roles that differing cognitive mechanisms, and mood disorders, play in people’s perception of effort. Furthermore, I help conduct a variety of fMRI data analysis projects, focusing on multivariate analyses of representations of affective stimuli. I am co-supervised by Dr. Rebecca Todd and Dr. Alan Kingstone. Additionally, I collaborate with Dr. Kiran Soma on statistical analyses of local steroid regulations in rodents. I also collaborate with Dr. Tim Murphy in the UBC Department of Psychiatry to develop computer vision methods to track animal behaviours in real time, and segment mesoscale calcium images in mice into functional brain regions.

Research Interests

Listen and Compare
What makes a sound unpleasant? When we’re bothered by something we hear, are we averse to the sound’s acoustic content (e.g. screeching noises or a loud volume) – or does the sound bring to mind an unpleasant past experience? And what role does a sound’s context play in our perception of it being aversive? These are some of the questions that I am currently exploring in the BAR Lab through tasks that ask participants to rate – and describe their ratings of – sounds on measures of valence and arousal.
 
Act, Avoid, and Approach
We often have to put in effort to avoid things that bother us, or to get things that we want. However, mood disorders such as depression and anxiety can shift how much we are willing and able to deploy this effort, in concert with changes in how we value avoiding aversive outcomes or approaching pleasant ones. With my co-supervisor Dr. Rebecca Todd, I investigate how people deploy physical and/or cognitive effort to avoid unpleasant outcomes or obtain rewards, and how participants’ levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms interact with their accuracy and effort deployment in a series of intermixed go/no-go tasks. Furthermore, I seek to identify and explore the cognitive processes that influence effort deployment in these tasks through mathematical and reinforcement learning models.

Publications

Forys, B. J., Tomm, R. J., Stamboliyska, D., Terpstra, A. R., Clark, L., Chakrabarty, T., Floresco, S. B., & Todd, R. M. (2023). Gender impacts the relationship between mood disorder symptoms and effortful avoidance performance. eNeuro, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0239-22.2023

Forys, B. J., Tomm, R. J., Stamboliyska, D., Terpstra, A. R., Clark, L., Chakrabarty, T., Floresco, S. B., & Todd, R. M. (2022). Gender and comorbidity moderate the relationship between mood disorder symptoms and effortful avoidance performance. BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.21.497075

Ehlers, M. R., Kryklywy, J. H., Beukers, A. O., Moore, S. R., Forys, B. J., Anderson, A. K., & Todd, R. M. (2021).
Reactivation of hedonic but not sensory representations in human emotional learning. BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.11.25.469891

Xiao, D., Forys, B. J., Vanni, M. P., & Murphy, T. H. (2021). MesoNet: automated scaling and segmentation of mouse mesoscale cortical maps using machine learning. Nature Communications, 12(1), 5992. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26255-2

Hamden, J.E., Salehzadeh, M., Gray, K. M., Forys, B. J., & Soma, K. K. (2021). Isoflurane stress induces glucocorticoid production in mouse lymphoid organs. Journal of Endocrinology, 251(2), 137-148. https://doi.org/10.1530/JOE-21-0154

Hamden, J. E., Gray, K., Saledzadeh, M., Kachkovski, G. K., Forys, B. J., Ma, C., Austin, S., Soma, K. K. (2021). Steroid profiling of glucocorticoids in microdissected mouse brain across development. Developmental Neurobiology, 81(2), 189–206. https://doi.org/10.1002/dneu.22808

Forys, B. J., Xiao, D., Gupta, P., & Murphy, T. H. (2020). Real-time selective markerless tracking of forepaws of head-fixed mice using deep neural networks. eNeuro, 7(3). https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0096-20.2020

Forys, B., Xiao, D., Gupta, P., Boyd, J. D., & Murphy, T. H. (2018). Real-time markerless video tracking of bodyparts in mice using deep neural networks. BioRxiv, 482349. https://doi.org/10.1101/482349

Awards

  • Stanley Coren Prize in Psychology, UBC, 2023
  • Four Year Fellowships (4YF) For PhD Students, UBC, 2022-2026
  • President’s Academic Excellence Initiative PhD Award, UBC, 2022-2026
  • Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral, NSERC (2022)
  • Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master’s, NSERC (2020)
  • NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award, NSERC/UBC (2020)
  • Trek Excellence Scholarship for Continuing Students, UBC (2019)
  • ARTA Scholarship, Alberta Retired Teachers’ Association (2019)
  • Wesbrook Scholar, UBC (2019)
  • HSBC Emerging Leader Scholarship, UBC (2019)
  • Suedfeld Scholar Award, UBC Psi Chi (2019)
  • PSYC 217 Poster Award, 1st Place, UBC Psychology (2018)
  • Student Scholarship in Arts, UBC Faculty of Arts (2018)
  • Trek Excellence Scholarship for Continuing Students, UBC (2017)
  • Stephen Straker Arts One Prize, UBC Arts One Program (2017)
  • University of BC Sopron Memorial Scholarship, UBC (2016)
  • Dean’s List, UBC Faculty of Arts (2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20)