| | Principal Investigators
| Christian Grillon, Ph.D. |
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Christian
Grillon, Ph.D. is the Unit Chief of the Affective
Psychophysiology Laboratory, National Institute
of Mental Health. Dr. Grillon received his B.S. and
Ph.D. from the University of Paris XI, France. He completed
his post-doctoral training at the University of California-Irvine
and the University of California-San Diego. Before joining
the NIMH in September of 2001, he was an Associate Professor
at the Yale University School of Medicine. His research
focuses on the
neurobiology of anxiety and anxiety disorders, and the
psychophysiology of emotion. |
| Research Interests |
| Dr. Grillon's laboratory 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 studies of human psychopathology. |
| Representative Selected Recent Publications: |
- Cornwell BR, Johnson L, Berardi L, Grillon C:
Anticipation of Public Speaking in Virtual Reality Reveals a Relationship Between Trait Social Anxiety and Startle Reactivity.
Biological Psychiatry, 2006, in press.
- Baas JM, Milstein J, Donlevy M, Grillon C:
Brainstem correlates of defensive states in humans.
Biological Psychiatry, 2006, in press.
- Lissek S, Pine DS, Grillon C:
The strong situation: a potential impediment to studying the psychobiology and pharmacology of anxiety disorders.
Biological Psychology, 2006, in press.
- Grillon C, Pine DS, Baas JMP, Lawley M, Ellis V, Charney DS:
Cortisol and DHEA-S are associated with startle potentiation during aversive conditioning in humans.
Psychopharmacology, 2006, in press.
- Vythilingam M, Lawley M, Collin C, Bonne O, Agarwal R, Hadd K, Charney DS, Grillon C:
Hydrocortisone impairs hippocampal-dependent trace eyeblink conditioning in post-traumatic stress disorder.
Neuropsychopharmacology, 31: 182-188, 2006.
- Grillon C, Warner V, Hille J, Merikangas KR, Bruder G, Tenke CE, Nomura Y, Leite P, Weissman MM:
Families at high and low risk for depression: A three-generation startle study.
>Biological Psychiatry, 57: 953-960, 2005. (View PDF)
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