• Associate Professor, Psychology
• Assistant Professor, Psychiatry

• Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• M.A. in Clinical Psychology at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• B.A. in Psychology at Northwestern University, Chicago, Ill.

News Stories & Tip Sheets:

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New leader for neuroscience research Barch named new director of Conte Center April 8, 2008 -- Barch The Silvio Conte Center for Neuroscience Research at Washington University has a new director. Deanna Barch, associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences, of psychiatry and of radiology, takes over leadership of the center from John Csernansky, the former Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry, who has become the chairman of psychiatry at Northwestern University.

Need cues, memory aids Memory study shows brain function in schizophrenia can improve with support July 13, 2005 -- Deanna Barch (right) co-authored a memory study that used a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine to monitor brain activity of people with schizophrenia. Download When encouraged to use memorization strategies commonly employed by healthy individuals, people with schizophrenia can be helped to remember information just as well as their healthy counterparts, a process that in itself seems to spur a normalization of memory-related activities in the brains of people with schizophrenia, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Need cues, memory aids Memory study shows brain function in schizophrenia can improve with support, holds promise for cognitive rehabilitation July 11, 2005 -- Deanna Barch (right), co-author of a memory study that used a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (shown in the background) to monitor the brain activity of people with schizophrenia. Download When encouraged to use memorization strategies commonly employed by healthy individuals, people with schizophrenia can be helped to remember information just as well as their healthy counterparts, a process that in itself seems to spur a normalization of memory-related activities in the brains of people with schizophrenia, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Society anxieties Crippling anxiety disorders often helped by behavorial therapy March 3, 2004 -- A psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis says that people who suffer from social anxiety disorders can receive help through cognitive behavior therapy. Citing statistics that show that many people fear public speaking more than death, comedian Jerry Seinfeld once joked that if you're at a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy. But for people who suffer from social anxiety disorders, one of which is public speaking, it's no laughing matter. These people's personal lives and careers can be sidelined by fear of certain social situations, such as speaking with a boss or authority figure, making telephone calls or attending parties. The good news is that these disorders are highly treatable through cognitive behavior therapy, in particular, group therapy, according to a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

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Barch describes her research:
My program of research is focused on understanding the interplay between cognition, brain function, and neurotransmission, in order to better understand the mechanisms contributing to the deficits in behavior and cognition displayed by patients with schizophrenia. In particular, I have focused on understanding the mechanisms leading to language disturbances in schizophrenia - such as formal thought disorder and poverty of speech - and the ways in which deficits in specific cognitive processes, prefrontal cortex (PFC), and/or dopamine may contribute to these symptoms. Numerous lines of research now implicate a dysfunction of both PFC and dopamine in schizophrenia. Recently, it has been hypothesized that reduced PFC activity, due to a reduction in dopaminergic tone, may play a role in "working memory" deficits in schizophrenia. Working memory refers to the ability to temporarily store and maintain information. Both neurophysiological and neuropsychological data support the hypothesis the PFC is involved in the active representation of information. Further, there are recent data demonstrating that appropriate levels of dopaminergic tone in PFC are necessary to support this cognitive function. Previous work on the relationships among cognition, PFC and dopamine represent important advances in our understanding of the underpinnings of schizophrenia. However, this work has not provided an explicit account of how such cognitive or biological abnormalities give rise to the particular symptoms of schizophrenia. The long-term goal of my work is to bridge this gap in our understanding, by providing an explicit account of how such abnormalities could lead to the thought and language deficits found in schizophrenia.

Two common threads run through my research program. The first thread is clarification of the nature of dysfunctional cognitive and biological processes in schizophrenia, as well as their relationships to each other, and to specific symptoms. The second thread is the study of cognitive and biological mechanisms involved in nonpathological performance in specific behavioral domains relevant to understanding schizophrenia. By clarifying the mechanisms that subserve nonpathological functioning, we can better understand how disturbances in these systems give rise to pathological functioning.

Sampling of recent publications (downloaded from Barch faculty page 12/2002):
• Albright JS, Alloy LB, Barch DM and Dykman B (1993). Social comparison by dysphoric and nondysphoric college students: The grass isn't always greener on the other side. Cognitive Therapy and Research 17: 485-509.

• Barch DM and Berenbaum H (1994). The relationship between information processing and language production. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 103: 241-250.

• Stolar N, Berenbaum H, Banich M, and Barch DM (1994). Neuropsychological correlates of alogia and affective flattening in schizophrenia. Biological Psychiatry 35: 164-172.

• Berenbaum H and Barch DM (1995). The categorization of thought disorder. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 24: 349-376.

• Barch DM, and Berenbaum H (1996). Language production and thought disorder in schizophrenia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 105: 81-88.

• Barch DM, Cohen JD, Servan-Schreiber D, Steingard S, Steinhauer S, and van Kammen D (1996). Semantic priming in schizophrenia: An examination of spreading activation using word pronunciation and multiple SOAs. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 105: 592-601.

• Barch DM and Berenbaum H (1997). Language generation in schizophrenia and mania. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 26: 410-412.

• Barch DM and Berenbaum H. (1997). The effect of language production manipulations on negative thought disorder and discourse coherence disturbances in schizophrenia. Psychiatry Research 71: 115-127

• Barch DM, Braver TS, Nystrom LE, Forman SD, Noll DC and Cohen JD (1997). Dissociating working memory from task difficulty in human prefrontal cortex. Neuropsychologia.35: 1373-1380.

• Carter CS, Braver TS, Barch DM, Botvinick MM, Noll DC, and Cohen JD (1998). Anterior cingulate cortex, error detection, and the on-line monitoring of performance. Science 280: 747-749.

• Barch DM and Carter CS. (1998). Selective attention in schizophrenia: Relationship to verbal working memory. Schizophrenia Research 33:53-61.

• Perlstein W, Carter CS, Barch DM, and Baird J (1998). A comparison of the card and single trial Stroop task versions in schizophrenia patients. Neuropsychology 12, 414-425.

• Cohen JD, Barch DM, Carter CS and Servan-Schreiber D. (1999). Schizophrenic deficits in the processing of context: Converging evidence from three theoretically motivated cognitive tasks. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 108(1), 120-133.

• Barch DM, Carter CS, Hachten PC and Cohen JD. (in press). The "benefits" of distractibility: The mechanisms underlying increased Stroop effects in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin.

• Barch DM, Carter CS, Perlstein W, Baird J, Cohen JD and Schooler N. (in press) Increased Stroop facilitation effects in schizophrenia are not due to increased automatic spreading activation. Schizophrenia Research.

• Braver TS, Barch DM and Cohen JD. (in press). Cognition and control in schizophrenia: A computational model of dopamine and prefrontal function. Biological Psychiatry.

• Barch DM, Carter CS, Braver TS, Sabb FW, Noll DC, and Cohen JD. (submitted). Overt verbal responding during fMRI scanning: Empirical investigations of problems and potential solutions. Submitted to Neuroimage.

• Braver TS, Barch DM, Cohen JD. (submitted) Mechanisms of cognitive control: Active memory, inhibition, and the prefrontal cortex. Submitted to Psychological Review.

• Barch DM, Carter CS, Braver TS, MacDonald A, Sabb FW, Noll DC, and Cohen JD. (submitted). Prefrontal cortex and context processing in medication naive first-episode patients with schizophrenia.

• Barch DM, Sabb FW, Braver TS, and Noll DC (submitted). The anterior cingulate cortex and response competion: Evidence from an fMRI study of overt verb generation.

• Botvinick MM, Braver TS, Carter CS, Barch DM, and Cohen JD. (submitted). Evaluating the demand for control: Anterior cingulate cortex and crosstalk monitoring.

• Kerns JG, Berenbaum H, Banich M, Stolar N, and Barch DM. (submitted). Word production and its relationship to positive symptoms.

• Barch DM. (in preparation). Working memory and reference production: The effects of delay, interference, and psychiatric illness.

• Barch DM, Braver TS, Kelley WM, Buckner RL, Peterson SE, Cohen NJ, Snyder AZ, Olinger JM, Conturo TE, Akbudak E, Raichle M. (in preparation). Common and distinct brain regions engaged by working memory and episodic retrieval.

• Barch DM, Carter CS, Cohen JD (in preparation). Speed-Accuracy functions in the Stroop task among patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls.

• Braver TS, Barch DM, Kelley WM, Buckner RL, Peterson SE, Snyder AZ, Olinger JM, Conturo TE, Akbudak E, Raichle M. (in preparation). Common and distinct brain regions engaged by working memory and episodic encoding.

• Braver TS, Barch DM, Snyder AZ, Olinger JM, Conturo TE, Akbudak E, Raichle M. (in preparation). Neural mechanisms of response inhibition and sustained attention: fMRI evidence against a dorsal-ventral distinction in prefrontal cortex.