MEMBER

Much of our current understanding of stress-related disorders – including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), phobias, panic attack, and generalized anxiety – comes from studying how the brain processes fear.

Jorge Armony, Ph.D. conducts research on how the brain detects stimuli in the environment that may signal threat or danger, and how this mechanism interacts with other processes, such as consciousness, attention, and memory.

In his quest for answers, Jorge Armony uses several state-of-the-art research techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), behavioural and physiological measures (i.e. skin conductance and heart rate), as well as computational modeling.

He has made significant contributions toward the understanding of psychiatric disorders involving dysfunctions of the fear system. For example, Jorge Armony recently found behavioural and anatomical correlates for the modulation of spatial attention by emotion using a fear-conditioning paradigm. These findings further characterized the role of the amygdala in fear processing, as well as defining selective roles for the frontal, parietal, and lateral orbitofrontal cortices in spatial attention.

In 2002, Jorge Armony was awarded Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Affective Neuroscience.