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 mediate 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 aims 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.

• Grillon , C., Heller, R., Hirschhorn, E., Kling, M. A., Pine, D. S., Schulkin, J., et al. Acute hydrocortisone treatment increases anxiety but not fear in healthy volunteers: a fear-potentiated startle study. Biol Psychiatry. 69, 549-555, 2011.
• Alvarez, R. P., Chen, G., Bodurka, J., Kaplan, R., & Grillon, C.. Phasic and sustained fear in humans elicits distinct patterns of brain activity. Neuroimage. 1(389-400), 2011.
• Robinson, O. J., Letkiewicz, A. M., Overstreet, C., Ernst, M., & Grillon , C. The effect of induced anxiety on cognition: threat of shock enhances aversive processing in healthy individuals. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 11, 217–227, 2011.
• Schmitz, A., Merikangas, K. R., Swendsen, H., Cui, L., Heaton, L., & Grillon, C. Measuring anxious responses to predictable and unpredictable threat in children and adolescents. J Exp Child Psychol., 110, 159-170, 2011.
• Cornwell, B. R., Salvadore, G., Colon-Rosario, V., Holroyd, T., Carver, F. V., Coppola, R., et al. Abnormal hippocampal functioning and impaired spatial navigation in depressed individuals: Evidence from whole-head magnetoencephalography. Am J Psychiatry.,167, 837-844, 2010.
• Davis, M., Walker, D. L., Miles, L., & Grillon, C.. Phasic vs sustained fear in rats and humans: role of the extended amygdala in fear vs. anxiety. Neuropsychopharmacol., 35, 105-135, 2010.