Emotional Neuroscience Research Lab
Laboratory Director: Jennifer Blackford, PhD [bio]
Our research is focused on understanding the neural basis of anxiety, including studies that map the basic neurocircuitry of anxiety, studies of anxiety neurobiology in children, and studies examining the role of anxiety in psychiatric disorders including PTSD, alcohol use disorders and schizophrenia.
Our approach is multi-level and multi-modal: we collect measurements across many levels including brain structure and function, physiological stress responses and behavior. Our neuroimaging methods include measures of brain structure (VBM, manual segmentation), function (functional magnetic resonance imaging), and connectivity (diffusion tensor imaging, resting state connectivity, task-based connectivity).
Our long term goal is to use these discoveries to develop new prevention strategies for children at high-risk for developing psychiatric disorders and new treatments for individuals suffering with these disorders.