The research program of the Affective Psychophysiology Laboratory, Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, National Institute of Mental Health is devoted to the study of normal and abnormal emotions with a strong emphasis on fear and anxiety. This research is conducted using psychophysiologcal and brain imaging techniques. The major areas of investigation include: 1) development of human models of fear and anxiety to understand mechanisms involved in the etiology and the maintenance of mood and anxiety disorders. This includes research on fear excitation, fear inhibition, and fear learning; 2) research on the role of associative learning on emotional reactivity to aversive stimuli; 3) studies of personality and temperamental dimensions of psychopathology; 4) investigations of the effects of psychotropic medications on fear and anxiety in healthy individuals and in clinical groups. This research seeks to better understand the mechanisms of action of psychopharmacologic treatments and to investigate the neurobiology of fear and anxiety; and 5) identification of the early manifestations of psychiatric illnesses using family studies. This includes research on psychophysiological markers of psychiatric disorders and assessment of emotional reactivity in individuals at-risk for psychopathology. Although the experimental approach is restricted to humans, this program of research is strongly influenced by theories and methods from animal analogues on emotion, motivation, and associative learning. Thus, the research relies on efforts to translate findings from animal research into human experimentation and psychopathology.

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