We all experience moments of fear or hesitation—whether it’s overthinking a social interaction, avoiding a stressful situation, or feeling paralyzed by uncertainty. 

Yet, for some individuals, these temporary experiences become persistent and sometimes overwhelming, severely impairing daily living.  

Grounded in interdisciplinary evolutionary and clinical research, our lab has developed a novel theoretical framework for understanding pathological anxiety and related symptoms. This framework reshapes how we think about psychopathology, and guides our research towards better treatment. 

You can read more about the framework here, and about different studies in our lab further down below.

Within our framework, anxiety symptoms, such as excessive worry, tension, and avoidance of opportunities, reflect disruptions in natural defensive response mechanisms.

This perspective allows us to think of anxiety as a tendency for amplified expression of otherwise normative functions that evolved to protect us from danger. 

This approach guides us in systematic research into the evolutionarily-conserved brain mechanisms that generate these responses, bringing us closer to developing novel ways to treat anxiety symptoms.

Using advanced neuroscience methods, such as psychophysiology recording and neuroimaging, we investigate how and when abnormal responses to potential threat unfold - in children and adults with and without anxiety, post-trauma, and related disorders. 

We identify these biomarkers to be able to predict vulnerability for different kinds of psychopathology and to guide the development of novel therapeutic approaches.