For many of us, threat-related behaviors are just one aspect of what we do: our desire to avoid, neutralize, or seek reassurance about threatening situations coexists with our many other goals and values. But those with clinical anxiety often find themselves devoting a great deal of time​ and energy to these threat-related behaviors, resulting in serious functional impairment. ​

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While great strides have been made in understanding and treating clinical anxiety, these patterns of costly, unnecessary threat-related behavior are not yet fully understood. With this in mind, I bring a decision-science approach to the investigation of clinical anxiety, applying behavioral and neuroimaging methods to probe the following questions:

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1. How do we make decisions when the motivation to respond to threats is at odds with other motivations (e.g., approach-avoidance conflict)? 

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2. What abnormalities in decision-making contribute to the patterns of costly, unnecessary threat-related behavior seen in clinical anxiety?

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3. What are common and distinct factors across various threat-related behaviors seen in clinical anxiety, including avoidance, compulsive safety behaviors, information seeking, substance use, and disordered eating?

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Through this work, I hope to contribute to a comprehensive account of threat-related decision-making that will ultimately improve the conceptualization and treatment of clinical anxiety.