| | Principal Investigators
| James Blair, Ph.D. |
 |
James Blair is Chief of the Unit
on Affective Cognitive Neuroscience in the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program at NIMH. Dr Blair received a doctoral
degree in Psychology from University College London in 1993 under the supervision of Professor John Morton.
Following graduation he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Mental Health Research Fellowship that he held at the
Medical Research Council Cognitive Development Unit for three years. Subsequently, he moved to the Institute of
Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. There, with Uta Frith, he helped form and co-lead the
Developmental Disorders group, and was ultimately appointed Senior Lecturer. He Joined the NIMH Intramural
Research Program in 2002. |
| Research Interests |
| Dr. Blair's primary research interest involves the neural mechanisms underlying the regulation of emotion in humans, and the neurobiology of anxiety disorder. He is interested in disorders that reflect disturbances in anxiety whether the dysfunction is characterized by reduced levels of anxiety, such as in psychopathy, or in elevated levels of anxiety, such as in social phobia. His research approach includes techniques employed in cognitive neuroscience (both neuropsychology and functional imaging), psychopharmacology and, more recently, molecular genetics. He has published extensively on these areas including patient groups characterized by psychopathy, "acquired sociopathy", autism and conduct disorder. |
| Representative Selected Recent Publications: |
- Luo Q, Nakic M, Wheatley T, Richell R, Martin A, Blair RJR: The neural basis of implicit moral attitude-an IAT study using event-related fMRI.
NeuroImage, 2006; in press.
- Kosson DS, Budhani S, Nakic M, Chen G, Saad ZS, Vythilingam M, Pine DS, Blair RJR:
The role of the amygdala and rostral anterior cingulate in encoding expected outcomes during learning.
NeuroImage, 2006; in press.
- Blair RJR:
Applying a cognitive neuroscience perspective to the disorder of psychopathy.
Dev Psychopathol, 17: 865-891, 2005.
- Blair RJR, Budhani S, Colledge E, Scott S:
Deafness in boys with psychopathic tendencies.
Child Psychol Psychiatry, 46: 327-336, 2005. (View PDF)
- Blair RJR:
The roles of orbital frontal cortex in the modulation of antisocial behavior.
Brain Cogn, 55: 198-208, 2004. (View PDF)
- Richell RA, Mitchell DG, Newman C, Leonard A, Baron-Cohen S, Blair RJR :
Theory of mind and psychopathy: can psychopathic individuals read the 'language of the eyes'?
Neuropsychologia, 2003; 41: 523-526. (View PDF)
|
|
|
|
|
