Welcome to the ZVR Lab
Our lab uses virtual reality (VR), multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and machine learning to try to elucidate the psychological and neural signatures of PTSD and anxiety disorders. Particularly, to delineate the contextual aspect of threat and reward learning, discrimination, and monitoring.
Specifically, we are 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, we expect to identify new brain measures to develop sensitive, personalized, and precise diagnostic and treatment tools for psychopathology.
Lab Members