Research Interests for Kevin S. LaBar

My research focuses on the neuroscience of emotion-cognition interactions in the human brain, with an emphasis on understanding how emotional events are linked to memory and attention systems. The laboratory combines studies of neurologic and psychiatric patients with studies of healthy adults using functional MRI, event-related potential and psychophysiological recording techniques. Our initial studies have shown that the amygdala is a critical brain structure involved in mediating arousal effects on both conditioned fear learning and explicit memory. Currently, this line of work is being extended to understand how the amygdala interacts with cortical brain regions at different stages of memory processing and the degree to which amygdala-dependent processing is under attentional and executive control.

Keywords:

Affect, Amygdala, Anxiety, Cognition, Conditioning, Classical, emotion, Emotions, fear, Fear, Galvanic Skin Response, Learning, Limbic System, memory, Memory, Memory Disorders, Neuroimaging, Neurosciences, Psychophysiology, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic, Virtual reality

Current projects:

Attentional cueing to emotional facial expressions

Emotional priming and procedural learning

Stress and context effects in fear learning

Cognitive neuroscience of emotion regulation

Representative Publications   (search)

1. Fichtenholtz, HM; Dean, HL; Dillon, DG; Yamasaki, H; McCarthy, G; LaBar, KS, Emotion-attention network interactions during a visual oddball task., Brain Research. Cognitive Brain Research, vol. 20 no. 1 (June, 2004), pp. 67-80 [15130591], [doi] [abs].
2. Dolcos, F; LaBar, KS; Cabeza, R, Interaction between the amygdala and the medial temporal lobe memory system predicts better memory for emotional events., Neuron, vol. 42 no. 5 (June, 2004), pp. 855-863 [15182723], [doi] [abs].
3. LaBar, KS, Emotional memory functions of the human amygdala., Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports, vol. 3 no. 5 (September, 2003), pp. 363-364 [12914677], [doi].
4. LaBar, KS; Crupain, MJ; Voyvodic, JT; McCarthy, G, Dynamic perception of facial affect and identity in the human brain., Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), vol. 13 no. 10 (October, 2003), pp. 1023-1033 [12967919], [doi] [abs].
5. Yamasaki, H; LaBar, KS; McCarthy, G, Dissociable prefrontal brain systems for attention and emotion., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 99 no. 17 (August, 2002), pp. 11447-11451 [12177452], [doi] [abs].