Ongoing COAP Research Projects

1. Conceptualization and Treatment of Misophonia: Recently, misophonia has been identified as a serious and debilitating condition marked by extreme aversive reactions to specific sounds, and associated visual reminders of these noises. We are presently completing treatment trials for the condition in adults and children.

2. Not Just Right Experiences in OCD: We are evaluating ways in which Not Just Right Experiences, a specific perceptual disturbance, may play a role in OCD.  At the present time, this line of inquiry is self-report in nature.  We are at this point initiating a study using a crowdsourcing methodology as well as several experimental investigations.

3. Disgust in anxiety disorders: Disgust remains an understudied emotional state. In the past 20 years there has been research showing that disgust plays a role in the avoidance shown in anxiety disorders. This includes complex anxiety states evident in posttraumatic stress and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The lab has ongoing work in this area that focuses on the extent disgust is involved in these problems.

4. Neural network changes in neuroticism: Neuroticism is the general trait associated with a wide range of anxiety disorders and depression. We are conducting a pilot program investigating changes in neural connectivity and activation associated with a structured and validated treatment for neuroticism. This project is in collaboration with Dr. Ray Razlighi of the Department of Neurology of Columbia University.

5. Drug and Alcohol Use in Anxiety Disorders: We are initiating a program of research evaluating patterns of drug and alcohol use in anxiety disorders, with an aim of developing adjunctive interventions for existing treatment protocols.