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Alexandre Dombrovski, MD

  • Associate Professor, Psychiatry

    Education & Training

  • Medical School - Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy, Russia – MD
  • Residency – Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC – Psychiatry
  • Fellowship - Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC – Geriatric Psychiatry
Research Grants

NIH Grants:  R01

Research Summary

Dr. Dombrovski studies decision processes in late-life suicidal behavior and in borderline personality.  His theoretical interests are in the exploration/exploitation dilemma and in elaborating a formal learning theory account of interpersonal dysfunction.  Dr. Dombrovski’s lab uses learning experiments, economic exchange games, functional neuroimaging, and computational modeling. Dr. Dombrovski directs two NIH-supported studies: of reward learning in late-life suicidal behavior and of social decision-making in borderline personality disorder.  He is a co-investigator on an NIH-funded longitudinal study of late-life suicide.  He takes care of patients with difficult-to-treat depression, borderline personality, and cognitive disorders, many of whom are at high risk for suicide.

Representative Publications
  1. Chase, H. W., Kumar, P., Eickhoff, S. B., & Dombrovski, A. Y. (2015). Reinforcement learning models and their neural correlates: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Cognitive Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-015-0338-7
  2. Dombrovski, A. Y., Szanto, K., Clark, L., Aizenstein, H. J., Chase, H. W., Reynolds, C. F., & Siegle, G. J. (2014). Corticostriatothalamic reward prediction error signals and executive control in late-life depression. Psychol Med, 1–12.   https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291714002517
  3. Dombrovski, A. Y., Szanto, K., Clark, L., Reynolds, C. F., & Siegle, G. J. (2013). Reward Signals, Attempted Suicide, and Impulsivity in Late-Life Depression. JAMA Psychiatry, 70(10), 1020–1030. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.75
  4. Dombrovski, Alexandre Y, Hallquist, M. N., Brown, V. M., Wilson, J., & Szanto, K. (in press). Value-based choice, contingency learning and suicidal behavior in mid-life and late-life depression. Biological Psychiatry.
  5. Hallquist, M. N., & Dombrovski, A. Y. (in press). Selective Maintenance of Value Information Helps Resolve the Exploration/Exploitation Dilemma. Cognition.
  6. Hallquist, M. N., Hall, N. T., Schreiber, A. M., & Dombrovski, A. Y. (2018). Interpersonal dysfunction in borderline personality: a decision neuroscience perspective. Current Opinion in Psychology, 21, 94–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.09.011