Philip Kragel
Emory University, GA·Neuroscience
Anxiety disorders affect roughly one in three people at some point in life, often begin in adolescence, and are a leading cause of health burden worldwide. They are thought to involve changes in brain circuits that drive defensive behavior, our reactions to danger.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Computer Science
- Topics
superior colliculus
defensive behavior
fear
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2029
What they work on
- Evaluate whether different superior colliculus pathways serve distinct functions, using machine learning models of brain connectivity while people perform avoidance learning, spatial attention and aversive-viewing tasks during fMRI.
- Determine how the human superior colliculus encodes looming threats, testing whether encoding models of changing or fixed threat better explain its fMRI signal, and relating these signals to cortical activity and self-reported experience.
- Test whether pathways from the frontal cortex to the superior colliculus dampen responses to threat cues and relate to lower anxiety symptoms in adolescents, using Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study data.
More about the research
In animals, a midbrain structure called the superior colliculus, which helps detect and orient to things in our surroundings, takes part in several pathways that trigger defensive responses. In people, altered activity in a pathway linking the superior colliculus, the pulvinar (a relay station in the thalamus) and the amygdala (a center for emotion) has been seen in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety. It is still unclear how the human superior colliculus contributes to fear and anxiety.
Why it matters
Anxiety disorders are common, often begin in adolescence and impose a large global health burden. Showing which superior colliculus pathways drive defensive reactions and fear, and which ones relate to anxiety symptoms in teenagers, could inform models of how anxiety develops. It may also help researchers link findings from animal studies to people and eventually point to better targets for anxiety treatment.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Huizhong Whit Tao
University of Southern California, CA·Neuroscience
Map how cortical pathology and molecular, cellular and gene-expression changes in the anterior cingulate cortex develop alongside apathy-like behavioral impairments in two mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, using spatial transcriptomics with anatomy and pathology.
Anson Kairys
University of Michigan, MI·Neuroscience·Early-career
Compare subjective (self-reported) and objective (test-based) cognitive function between people with fibromyalgia and healthy controls, and assess how co-occurring symptoms shape the relationship between the two.
Bader Chaarani
University of Vermont, VT·Psychology
Identify how active (video gaming), passive (TV and videos) and mixed (social media, texting, video chatting) screen media activity relate to mental health, cognition and brain development across four ABCD time points.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
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