Anxiety disorders are a leading source of human suffering. These disorders first emerge early in life, are extremely common, and are often resist treatment. Individuals with an anxious temperament -- those who express anxiety too intensely or in inappropriate contexts -- are much more likely to develop anxiety and other psychiatric disorders. To understand the substrates of this risk, we use a broad spectrum of tools, including brain imaging (fMRI/FDG-PET), peripheral physiological measures, and behavioral assays, such as experience sampling. Our laboratory is particularly focused on characterizing the mechanisms by which anxiety alters the processing of threats and punishments in a way that enhances the likelihood of avoidance and behavioral inhibition. Clinically, our work promises to enhance our understanding of how emotional traits and states modulate risk, facilitate the discovery of novel intermediate phenotypes and biomarkers, and set the stage for developing improved interventions. From a basic psychological science perspective, our research begins to address fundamental questions about the deep architecture of personality and the interplay of emotion and cognition.

Research Interests
Affective and cognitive neuroscience; neural bases of threat processing, anxiety, and their application to psychiatric disorders; neural bases of personality and individual differences in state/trait anxiety and behavioral inhibition; cognition × emotion interactions: interactions of anxiety and higher cognition (cognitive control, selective attention, and working memory); amygdala; prefrontal cortex; cingulate cortex.