About

Qimin Liu is an Assistant Professor and Lab Director of the Quantitative Psychopathology Laboratory at Boston University in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences. He received his PhD in Psychological Sciences with specializations in Clinical Science and Quantitative Methods from Vanderbilt University. His educational background also includes completing a pre-doctoral clinical internship at the University of Illinois Chicago Department of Psychiatry. Joining Boston University in 2023, Dr. Liu's research focuses on emotional disturbances across development, including affective phenomenology, social determinants, and suicidal or aggressive outcomes. He also emphasizes statistical method and software development, such as intensive longitudinal data models and data mining algorithms, and explores intersectional marginalization and health equity. His empirical research primarily concentrates on adults with severe mood disturbances, utilizing both primary data collection and secondary data analyses.

Research topics

• Psychiatry
• Clinical psychology
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Machine Learning
• Developmental psychology
• Psychotherapist
• Chemistry
• Statistics
• Engineering
• Botany
• Biochemistry
• Internal medicine
• Mathematics
• Medical emergency
• Andrology
• Biology

Selected publications

• Bed nucleus of the stria terminalis-nucleus accumbens stimulation for depression: A randomized, double-blind, crossover trial

  Cell Reports Medicine · 2026-03-31

  articleOpen access

  Although deep brain stimulation (DBS) shows potential in treatment-resistant depression (TRD), the efficacy remains controversial. To assess the efficacy of DBS of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) for TRD, we conduct a randomized, double-blind, crossover trial after an open-label optimization stage. Stimulation leads to a mean decrease in the Hamilton Depression Scale-17 (HAMD) scores of 10.1 points (p < 0.001) with a 50% response rate at the end of the open-label stage. Anxiety, quality of life, and disability are also improved. The HAMD scores are significantly lower in patients during active DBS than during sham DBS (p < 0.001). Serious adverse events include suicide (1 patient) and seizure (1 patients). With individual stimulation analysis, we identify optimal stimulation sites, fiber tracts, and functional networks (false discovery rate [FDR] p < 0.05). This study demonstrates the efficacy and safety of BNST-NAc DBS for TRD and reveals optimal brain targets for stimulation. This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04530942).

  PublisherDOI

• Loneliness and Emotion Recognition Accuracy Across Repeated Introductory Conversations

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  otherOpen accessSenior author

  This study aims to examine the relationship between emotion recognition (accurate interpersonal emotion perception) and loneliness using an ecologically valid approach. For each participant, we measure emotion recognition in live naturalistic conversations over Zoom to more closely resemble how emotion recognition occurs in everyday life relative to typical emotion recognition paradigms (c.f., inferring emotion from static facial images). Immediately following unstructured conversations via video call, each participant independently rates how strongly they feel across each of six emotion labels spanning positive (happy, surprise) and negative (angry, disgusted, sad, afraid) affective domains in addition to rating how they perceive their partner feels on the same six emotions. Each participant follows this naturalistic conversation procedure up to five times, each time with a different unfamiliar partner. We operationalize emotion recognition as the difference (i.e., bias score) between the intensity of the given emotion that an actor perceives of their partner and the intensity of that emotion the partner reported feeling. We then use linear mixed-effects models to estimate participants’ emotion recognition scores from loneliness as reported at baseline. We expect that participants who report greater levels of loneliness during baseline will demonstrate poorer emotion recognition accuracy, adding ecological validity to previous findings that lonely individuals demonstrate impaired social cognition and negativity bias (e.g., increased attentional bias toward negative emotions). In order to isolate the effects of loneliness on emotion recognition accuracy, analyses will control for characteristics previously shown to influence emotion recognition accuracy including individuals’ own emotional state at the time of the conversation, baseline social anxiety symptoms, and whether their ethnoracial identity matches that of their conversation partner. Research Question: Given what we already know about the influence of emotions on emotion perception, does loneliness influence or fundamentally alter how emotions affect emotion recognition in naturalistic first-time conversations?

  PublisherDOI

• Network analysis of parenting, stigma, and psychopathology in sexual and gender minority parents.

  Journal of Family Psychology · 2026-02-17 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Sexual and gender minority parents face unique stressors related to both parenting and minority status, yet the complex interplay between stigma experiences, parenting behaviors, and psychological well-being remains understudied. This cross-sectional study used network analysis to examine associations among parenting practices, stigma, and mental health symptoms in a national sample of 672 sexual and gender minority parents in the United States. Participants completed online surveys assessing experiences of discrimination, internalized homophobia and transphobia, parenting behaviors (e.g., hostility, supportiveness, positive reinforcement, control), and psychological symptoms (anxiety, depression, child psychopathology). We used a statistical approach called Bayesian Gaussian graphical models to estimate how each variable is directly related to others while accounting for the rest of the network. We also identified which variables appeared most strongly connected to others (central variables) and which served as key links between different domains (bridge variables). Subgroup analyses explored differences in the network structure across sexual and gender identity groups. Results indicated that positive reinforcement, supportiveness, and internalized transphobia were the most strongly connected variables overall, meaning they may play important roles in shaping broader patterns of parenting and well-being.Variables such as child psychopathology, internalized stigma, and parental anxiety served as bridges connecting parenting, stigma, and mental health. Subgroup comparisons revealed distinct patterns of associations: Gender minority parents showed high centrality and bridge centrality for internalized transphobia, physical control, and child psychopathology, while cisgender parents demonstrated centrality in positive reinforcement, supportiveness, and internalized homophobia. Sexual identity differences also emerged, with lesbian and gay parents exhibiting stronger connections between parenting behaviors and stigma-related variables than bisexual and heterosexual parents. These patterns suggest that different aspects of stigma and parenting may matter more depending on parents' identities. Findings may help identify targets for support programs and policies tailored to the specific needs of diverse sexual and gender minority families. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• A Text Mining Approach to Measure Consistency in Self-Reported Situational Causes for Irritability (Preprint)

  2026-01-06

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  <sec> <title>BACKGROUND</title> Irritability, a transdiagnostic symptom linked to severe functional impairment and suicide risk, comprises of tonic irritability (i.e., chronic irritable mood) and phasic irritability (i.e., episodic anger outbursts). However, the consistency in situational triggers for irritability (i.e., irritability-related stressors) has not been thoroughly studied. </sec> <sec> <title>OBJECTIVE</title> This study uses text mining to create a metric for consistency in irritability-related stressors and examines its association with daily irritability. </sec> <sec> <title>METHODS</title> Ninety-seven participants (47% female; age: M = 38.85, SD = 10.62; 16% ethno-racial minority) with self-reported depression completed a baseline survey and up to 18 days of daily diaries. We computed the semantic similarity between daily text descriptions of irritability-related stressors to estimate within-person consistency across days. We applied linear regression, mixed-effects linear model, and permutation regression to test the metric’s fairness, relations to daily tonic and phasic irritability separately, and associations with the intraindividual covariance between tonic and phasic irritability. </sec> <sec> <title>RESULTS</title> The constructed metric showed no demographic differences. The metric was negatively associated with baseline phasic irritability (β = 0.23, p &lt;0.001) and daily phasic irritability (β = -0.24, p &lt; 0.001). Higher value in the metric was linked to greater covariance between tonic and phasic irritability (β = 0.23, p &lt; 0.001). </sec> <sec> <title>CONCLUSIONS</title> The findings indicated that the irritability-related stressors consistency index serves as a fair and unbiased measurement tool for assessing the consistency of self-reported situational causes of irritability. Furthermore, diverse situational causes are indicative of vulnerability to daily phasic irritability. When situational causes are reported to be consistent, individuals tend to experience co-occurring tonic and phasic irritability. </sec>

  PublisherDOI

• Homework adherence in exposure-based CBT for youth with obsessive-compulsive disorder: Clinical outcomes and predictors across treatment

  Behaviour Research and Therapy · 2026-04-20

  articleOpen access

  Exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the frontline treatment for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but not all youth fully respond to this treatment. While multiple factors may influence CBT response, homework adherence in CBT is a modifiable target that can improve treatment outcomes. This report examines the relationship between homework adherence and clinical outcomes in a large sample of youth with OCD who received exposure-based CBT. Here, 137 youth with OCD between 7 and 17 years old (M = 12.42, SD = 2.88) participated in a randomized controlled trial of exposure-based CBT. Homework adherence was monitored weekly, and OCD severity was assessed by independent evaluators masked to treatment condition using gold-standard rating scales. Mixed-effects linear and logistic regression models examined the relationship between homework adherence, reductions in OCD severity, treatment response, and clinical remission at post-treatment. Follow-up investigations explored differences in patterns between early- and late-homework adherence. Finally, baseline clinical predictors of homework adherence were explored. There was a significant predictive relationship between greater homework adherence and reduced OCD severity, greater incidence of treatment response, and greater incidence of clinical remission at post-treatment. Greater homework adherence later in treatment-as opposed to earlier in treatment-was most impactful in predicting positive clinical outcomes in exposure-based CBT. Presence of co-occurring ADHD was a significant predictor of decreased homework adherence. Taken together, findings provide insight into a modifiable therapeutic target that can improve treatment outcomes in exposure-based CBT.

  PublisherDOI

• Bed nucleus of the stria terminalis-nucleus accumbens stimulation for depression: A randomized, double-blind, crossover trial

  Cell Reports Medicine · 2026-04-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Relations among daily symptoms of depression

  British Journal of Psychology · 2026-04-10

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Research has often treated depression as a unitary construct, relying on severity scores or diagnostic thresholds; however, recent studies emphasize that depression is a heterogeneous disorder characterized by dynamic symptom interactions. We aimed to identify unique relations among depressive symptoms when examined longitudinally. We used a 28-day daily diary design in young adults (N = 363). Three symptom networks, estimated from Bayesian structural equation modelling, identified key symptoms that (1) predicted other symptoms within individuals over time (within-subject temporal), (2) co-occurred within the same day (within-subject contemporaneous) and (3) clustered across individuals (between-subject). Results revealed that (1) at the within-subject level, higher levels of sleep disturbance, sad mood, and concentration difficulties predicted higher levels of multiple symptoms the following day, (2) at the within-subject level, sad mood, anhedonia, and fatigue tended to co-occur with many other symptoms and (3) at the between-subject level, individuals with higher levels of anhedonia, anxiety and concentration difficulties tended to experience a broader range of depressive symptoms. These findings underscore the complexity of depressive symptom interactions and highlight potential ways in which depression may manifest. Future research should explore the identified relations to clarify causal relations among symptoms as well as trait-level vulnerability to symptoms.

  PublisherDOI

• Loneliness and Conversational Alignment in Young Adults

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  otherOpen accessSenior author

  Loneliness, the subjective experience of social disconnection, is highly prevalent (Surkalim et al., 2022) and has been linked to a range of poor physical, psychological, and functional outcomes (Park et al., 2020). Given social disconnection’s detrimental impact on health and wellbeing, researchers have proposed a range of cognitive, affective, and relational processes that may be implicated in the development and maintenance of loneliness (Walsh et al., 2025). The evolutionary and sociocognitive model of loneliness (J. T. Cacioppo et al., 2006; Hawkley &amp; Cacioppo, 2010), suggests that, in the short-term, loneliness serves as an adaptive signal that social input is not sufficient, motivating individuals toward social interaction (promoting ‘social homeostasis’). According to this model, loneliness only becomes maladaptive in its chronic or severe manifestation, when prolonged disconnection contributes to heightened social threat sensitivity in ways that consequentially disrupt social functioning (e.g., loneliness leading to cognitions of diminished interpersonal trust, social withdrawal, etc.; Cacioppo et al., 2016; Qualter et al., 2015). Loneliness may be especially consequential during young adulthood, a developmental period characterized by negotiation between drive for independence with intensified focus on seeking and consolidating close relationships (Arnett, 2001; McAdams &amp; Adler, 2010). Loneliness is thought to be uniquely prevalent during this stage (Beam &amp; Kim, 2020) and is prospectively linked to subsequent mental health difficulties and chronic social disconnection (Christiansen et al., 2021; Qualter et al., 2015). Despite the many factors thought to be implicated in the development and maintenance of loneliness across the lifespan (Perlman &amp; Peplau, 1981), Despite extensive research on loneliness across developmental stages (Qualter et al., 2015; Verity et al., 2025), relatively little is known about how loneliness manifests within the real-time, dyadic social dynamics of youths’ everyday interactions. Specifically, although loneliness can occur independently of objective social contact, loneliness often emerges in the context of unsatisfying social interaction, including disruptions in interpersonal attunement. Interpersonal attunement, the moment-to-moment coordination of affect, language, and behavior, is a dynamic process that fosters mutual understanding and subjective connection between conversation partners. Examining how loneliness relates to real-time interpersonal attunement in young adults may clarify mechanisms that either reinforce or attenuate social disconnection during the consequential social dynamics during this sensitive developmental window. One promising marker of interpersonal attunement is lexical alignment, the tendency for two speakers in a conversation to align, or match, their linguistic patterns during dialogue (Reilly et al., 2025; Sacks et al., 2026). Lexical alignment has been theorized to reflect shared understanding (i.e., alignment of mental representation) between conversational partners (Garrod et al., 2018; Garrod &amp; Pickering, 2004) as well as mutual sense of social connection (Ireland et al., 2011). However, it remains unclear how lexical alignment is associated with trait loneliness in young adults. Competing theoretical predictions are plausible regarding how loneliness may influence interpersonal coordination according to the evolutionary sociocognitive framework. Adaptive levels of loneliness may promote motivation to increase affiliative behavior in an effort to obtain connection, potentially resulting in increased alignment in conversation (what we call the “compensatory” hypothesis; loneliness serves as a signal motivating to seek sufficient social contact). In contrast, threat sensitivity and reduced interpersonal trust that characterize high trait loneliness may disrupt social attunement, potentially contributing to diminished lexical alignment (what we call the “deficit” hypothesis; loneliness contributes to a coordination deficit in social interactions). While we expect that trait loneliness will be systematically associated with conversational alignment overall, the direction of this association remains an empirical question To evaluate these hypotheses, the present study will examine lexical alignment in spontaneous dyadic conversation in a sample of young adults. We investigate cross-speaker alignment in the linguistic dimensions of emotional arousal, valence, and trust-related language. Alignment in emotional arousal is thought to represent shared activation during conversation, which is likely shaped by the degree of social hypervigilance experienced by members of the dyad (Hawkley &amp; Cacioppo, 2010). Alignment in linguistic valence captures the extent to which conversational partners share a positive or negative affective tone, a key feature of emotional attunement with others and perceived responsiveness in social interaction (Reis &amp; Shaver, 1988). Finally, alignment in trust-related language is thought reflect mutual conversational engagement, related to increased interpersonal emotional between conversation partners and reduced social threat sensitivity (Bellucci &amp; Park, 2024; Rotenberg, 2010). We will analyze a dataset of 639 unscripted dyadic conversations from a sample of N = 261 young adults. Cross-speaker alignment will be quantified using computational linguistic methods implemented in the R package ConversationAlign (Sacks et al., 2026). Lexical dimensions were derived from lexical characteristics of transcribed conversations using validated computational norms within ConversationAlign. We hypothesize that trait loneliness predicts lexical alignment at the between-person level, however given the competing theories on the impact of loneliness on social interaction quality, the direction of these associations remains open.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Neural Correlates Involved in Behavioral Metrics of Emotion Regulation and Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors

  Archives of Suicide Research · 2025-09-20 · 1 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Given the well-documented association between emotion regulation (ER) deficits and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs), and the limited understanding of their neural mechanisms, we reviewed studies across five databases that included validated ER tasks and neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography. This systematic review synthesizes evidence from 11 neuroimaging studies to explore the neural correlates of ER deficits in individuals with STBs. Findings revealed that individuals with STBs exhibit heightened activation in the dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during ER tasks, alongside increased amygdala reactivity to negative stimuli (e.g., sad facial expressions), in implicit ER paradigms. Heterogeneity in prefrontal cortex activation suggests that task- and population-specific neural signatures may influence these patterns. Our review also identifies methodological limitations in the current literature, including a reliance on cross-sectional designs and small sample sizes, which limit generalizability. These limitations highlight the need for longitudinal and multi-modal studies to better understand the dynamic neural patterns associated with ER and STBs. By elucidating the neural underpinnings of ER deficits in STBs, these findings may enable earlier identification of at-risk individuals and the development of personalized, targeted interventions (e.g., transcranial magnetic stimulation).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Self-reported executive dysfunction predicts COVID-19 traumatic stress: A prospective study.

  Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy · 2025-07-28

  articleSenior author

  OBJECTIVE: Although executive dysfunction has been implicated as a risk factor for the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), there remains a paucity of prospective research along these lines. Given that emerging research has shown that traumatic stress symptoms are commonly observed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the present longitudinal study examined the extent to which self-reported prepandemic executive dysfunction uniquely predicted subsequent COVID-related traumatic stress over 15 weeks of the pandemic. METHOD: = 336) who completed measures of executive dysfunction, attentional control, and distress intolerance in 2016 as part of a larger study were contacted at the start of the pandemic (March 2020) and assessed for COVID-related traumatic stress symptoms every 2 weeks for 30 weeks. RESULTS: Although bivariate correlations revealed that executive dysfunction and attentional control were significantly correlated with the latent slope (i.e., trajectory) of traumatic stress symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic, none of the predictors were uniquely associated with the latent slope of COVID-related traumatic stress symptoms in a latent growth curve model. Executive dysfunction, attentional control, and distress intolerance were also associated with an increased latent intercept for traumatic stress symptoms. However, only executive dysfunction uniquely predicted an increased latent intercept for traumatic stress symptoms after accounting for the effects of other predictors. CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight that self-reported deficits in executive dysfunction prior to the pandemic uniquely predicted risk of experiencing traumatic stress symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings have important implications for preventing adverse trauma reactions in future pandemics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

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Frequent coauthors

• Amelia M. Stanton

  Boston University

  51 shared

• Richard T. Liu

  Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research

  49 shared

• Norik Kirakosian

  Fenway Health

  49 shared

• Katherine E. Kabel

  49 shared

• Alexandra H. Bettis

  Vanderbilt University Medical Center

  49 shared

• Conall O’Cleirigh

  Fenway Health

  49 shared

• David A. Cole

  Vanderbilt University

  25 shared

• Bridget A. Nestor

  Harvard University

  15 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychological Sciences

  Vanderbilt University