Date: Friday, February 7th, 2025
Time: 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
Location: Room 1116, 11th floor (100 College Street, New Haven, CT 06510)
Title: The Human Amygdala, Threat, and Anxiety: Translational Progress and Challenges
Abstract: Animal models of associative threat learning provide a basis for understanding human fears and anxiety. This talk explores the successes and failures in translating the neural mechanisms of threat processing identified in animal models to complex human learning and the treatment of anxiety-related disorders. First, I will briefly review how extinction and emotion regulation, techniques adapted in cognitive behavioral therapy treatments can be used to control learned defensive responses via inhibitory signals from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex to the amygdala. One drawback of these techniques is threat responses are often weakly inhibited and can return, which has been proposed to underlie the significant relapse rate following cognitive behavioral therapies. I will then describe novel behavioral interventions that might result in a more lasting fear or threat reduction and will discuss efforts to incorporate these novel techniques to innovative treatments for anxiety-related disorders. Finally, I will reflect on how we might improve efforts to translate insights from the neurobiology of threat learning to the treatment of anxiety-related disorders.