Faculty

Research Overview

My research program aims to use virtual reality (VR), multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and machine learning to elucidate the psychological and neural signatures of PTSD and anxiety disorders. Particularly, to delineate the contextual aspects of threat and reward learning, discrimination, and monitoring. I am specifically interested in cases where an area within a larger environment becomes associated with threat, such as the area of a neighborhood where an assault or assaults took place, or the location on a battlefield where explosions occurred. Patients with PTSD and anxiety disorders often show an overgeneralization or an exaggerated response to threat in larger contexts, even in environments predicting safety. With this research, I plan to identify new brain measures to develop sensitive, personalized, and precise diagnostic and treatment tools for psychopathology.