Dr. Grillon investigates basic psychological and neural mechanisms underlying fear and anxiety to gain a better understanding of their dysfunction in anxiety disorders. He is interested in contrasting the fear-spectrum disorders, such as simple phobia and social anxiety disorder, and the anxiety-spectrum disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder. Toward these goals, Dr. Grillon examines defense mechanisms that mediating fear and anxiety in humans using a translational approach. Fear and anxiety can be studied by exposing subjects to different classes of threats. Responses to threats entail functionally distinct cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes. For example, an imminent threat evokes a phasic fear response, which is an active coping mechanism characterized by fight or flight, while a more distal or uncertain threat generates a more persistent state of anxious apprehension and hypervigilance. Dr. Grillon’s research aimed at elucidating the nature of these basic processes and their dysregulation in anxiety disorders. He uses a multiperspective strategy based on psychophysiology to obtain objective measures of aversive states, psychopharmacology to identify defense mechanisms on which anxiolytics operate, and neuroimaging to map the neural structures underlying fear and anxiety. Elucidating pathophysiological mechanisms is a prerequisite for better treatment and classification of anxiety disorders, the most prevalent of the psychiatric disorders. |
