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Research group: Fear and anxiety > Overview

Research Group: Fear and anxiety

Overview

Our interest is in psychological and neurobiological mechanisms of anxiolysis. While most research in the field of anxiolysis is about finding new drugs or understanding how drugs achieve their anxiolytic effects, our strategy is to investigate the neural basis of safety learning. Safety learning is a process by which one learns that a feared stimulus is not as threatening as expected, resulting in an attenuation of anxiety responses. Safety learning often occurs in everyday life and is an essential component of adaptive behavior. In cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), safety learning is specifically promoted through extinction training and various forms of cognitive regulation such as reappraisal. Our bet is that a better, notably neurobiological, understanding of these learning processes will open up new ways to improve anxiety therapy, but also to enhance quality of life in normal individuals.

Research topics

• Mechanisms of fear conditioning, extinction, reappraisal and other safety learning processes
• Safety memory formation, consolidation, recall
• Individual differences in fear behaviors and safety learning
• Enhancement of safety learning through behavioral, pharmacological or other manipulations

Key publications

• Lonsdorf TB, Kalisch R: A review on experimental and clinical genetic associations studies on fear conditioning, extinction and cognitive-behavioral treatment. Transl Psychiatry 2011; 1: e41
• Raczka KA, Mechias ML, Gartmann N, Reif A, Deckert J, Pessiglione M, Kalisch R: Empirical support for an involvement of the mesostriatal dopamine system in human fear extinction. Transl Psychiatry 2011; 1: e12
• Etkin A, Egner T, Kalisch R: Emotional processing in anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex. Trends Cogn Sci 2011; 15: 85-93
• Raczka KA, Gartmann N, Mechias ML, Reif A, Büchel C, Deckert J, Kalisch R: A neuropeptide S receptor variant associated with over-interpretation of fear reactions: a potential neurogenetic basis for catastrophizing. Mol Psychiatry 2010; 15: 1067-74
• There is a corrigendum for this paper. Please contact R. Kalisch.
• Mechias ML, Etkin A, Kalisch R: A meta-analysis of instructed fear studies: Implications for conscious appraisal of threat. Neuroimage 2010; 49: 1760-8
• Kalisch R: The functional neuroanatomy of reappraisal: time matters. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2009; 33:1215-26
• Marschner A, Kalisch R, Vervliet B, Vansteenwegen D, Büchel C: Dissociable roles for the hippocampus and the amygdala in human cued vs. context fear conditioning. J Neurosci 2008; 28: 9030-6
• Yacubian J, Sommer T, Schroeder K, Glascher J, Kalisch R, Leuenberger B, Braus DF, Büchel C: Gene-gene interaction associated with neural reward sensitivity. PNAS 2007; 2104: 8125-30
• Pessiglione M, Schmidt L, Draganski B, Kalisch R, Lau H, Dolan RJ, Frith CD: How the brain translates money into force: a neuroimaging study of subliminal motivation. Science 2007; 316: 904-6
• Kalisch R, Wiech K, Critchley HD, Dolan RJ: Levels of appraisal: A medial prefrontal role in cognitive appraisal of emotional material. Neuroimage 2006; 30: 1458-66
• Kalisch R, Korenfeld E, Stephan KE, Weiskopf N, Seymour B, Dolan RJ: Context-dependent human extinction memory is mediated by a ventromedial prefrontal and hippocampal network. J Neurosci 2006; 26: 9503-11
• Wiech K*, Kalisch R*, Weiskopf N, Pleger B, Stephan KE, Dolan RJ: Anterolateral prefrontal cortex mediates the analgesic and anxiolytic effects of expected and perceived control over pain. J Neurosci 2006; 26: 11501-9