Adolescent Social Phobia and Neurophysiological Function

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究职业奖的目标是培养申请人进行独立转化导向临床研究的能力。申请人接受过实验方法学、儿童心理学和神经科学方面的培训。该背景使申请人能够批判性地审查相关文献并开发基于神经科学模型的方法程序，这些模型可用于研究儿童的大脑功能。这项资助将为申请人提供必要的培训和指导，帮助他们使用这些方法和理论，开始揭示发展性精神病理学的神经关联。申请人将在儿童精神病学，精神病诊断程序和使用适应神经成像程序来研究精神疾病方面得到指导。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this Research Career Award is to develop the applicant's ability to conduct independent translationally oriented clinical research. The applicant is trained in experimental methodology, child psychology and neuroscience. This background enables the applicant to critically review the relevant literature and develop methodological procedures based on neuroscience models that can be adapted to study brain function in children. This grant would provide the training and mentoring necessary for the applicant to use these methods and theories to begin to reveal the neural correlates of developmental psychopathology. The applicant will be mentored in child psychiatry, psychiatric diagnostic procedures and in the use of adapting neuroimaging procedures for the study of psychiatric disorders. Animal research provides an effective pathophysiological model for anxiety. Using fear provoking paradigms, animal model approaches delineate a neural circuit that includes the amygdala and the orbito-frontal cortex in anxiety-related behaviors. Research in adults with anxiety disorders documents perturbations in the same regions in response to fear provoking stimuli, particularly emotionally evocative faces. However, very little work has been conducted to document comparable perturbations in adolescents with anxiety. The research objective for the present proposal is to use animal models of anxiety as a guide to reveal the neurophysiological and behavioral correlates of adolescent social phobia. Specifically, healthy adolescents and those with social phobia will be presented with fear provoking stimuli (emotional faces), while brain activation is measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Such work will help to reveal the neurophysiological correlates of adolescent social phobia. The long-term goal is to identify neurobiological and behavioral events that underlie the development of childhood anxiety disorders.