Although it is important to detect and attend to emotional stimuli, frequently emotional stimuli may interfere with other important and more relevant task goals. For example, after detecting a salient stimulus like an icy patch on the road while driving, it is important to also stay focused on task-relevant aspects like driving speed, distance from other cars, etc. In such situations, we are usually able to exercise cognitive control to override the distracting effects of emotional stimuli in favor of more goal-oriented behaviors. We do this by selectively attending to context or to task-relevant representations that are being maintained in a transient, limited-capacity memory system referred to as “working memory” (WM).

Accordingly, another line of research focuses on how our brain protects task-relevant contents of working memory from interference by emotional distractors and fails to do so in anxiety and psychotic disorders. Using a dimensional approach recommended by the NIMH RDoC framework, we found that worse WM and abnormal PFC activity due to emotional distractors was associated with more severe psychotic symptoms and worse real-world functioning, irrespective of psychotic disorders diagnoses. These studies  clarify the clinical specificity and practical utility of these transdiagnostic neural measures in predicting symptoms and real-world functioning