RESEARCH
Our goal is to map some of the candidate neurobiological and behavioral mechanisms that underlie maladaptive attention in stress states and stress-related disorders. We examine the interactions of perception (cognition), arousal and valence (affect), and stress states on the continuum from normative to maladaptive (psychopathology). Our long-term goal is an enhanced understanding of the onset and maintenance of symptom episodes in posttraumatic stress disorder, with an ultimate goal of prevention. In particular, we pursue three related lines of research:
First, what mechanisms operate maladaptively in the brain, and particularly the visual system, in stress states and related disorders? Second, under what conditions do normative visual and other neural mechanisms malfunction or hyperfunction, leading to the onset and maintenance of symptom episodes? Third, how can we more precisely predict who is at greatest risk for experiencing symptoms, independent of diagnosis, following trauma exposure? The common mechanisms of interest include problematic allocation of attention, physiological and neural reactivity, and vigilance for threat-relevant information, and we are also always mindful of the potential influences of context, culture, and the nature of the stressor or traumatic event (i.e., interpersonal or not).
Our lab takes a multi-method approach, including experimental tasks modified from vision science, eye-tracking, immunoassay of salivary neuroendocrine markers, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and diffusion weighted imaging (DWI), to investigate the mechanisms underlying both normative and maladaptive affective processing.
First, what mechanisms operate maladaptively in the brain, and particularly the visual system, in stress states and related disorders? Second, under what conditions do normative visual and other neural mechanisms malfunction or hyperfunction, leading to the onset and maintenance of symptom episodes? Third, how can we more precisely predict who is at greatest risk for experiencing symptoms, independent of diagnosis, following trauma exposure? The common mechanisms of interest include problematic allocation of attention, physiological and neural reactivity, and vigilance for threat-relevant information, and we are also always mindful of the potential influences of context, culture, and the nature of the stressor or traumatic event (i.e., interpersonal or not).
Our lab takes a multi-method approach, including experimental tasks modified from vision science, eye-tracking, immunoassay of salivary neuroendocrine markers, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and diffusion weighted imaging (DWI), to investigate the mechanisms underlying both normative and maladaptive affective processing.