Fear Profiles: Identification and characterization of individual trajectories in fear and anxiety

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Tina Barbara Lonsdorf
• Subject Area: Biological Psychiatry ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience ; Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology ; Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 405663121

The time is ripe for a paradigm shift in the field of experimental fear and anxiety research. In the past decades, clinical and experimental work has provided invaluable insights into generic principles via population-based inferences, whereas individual differences have been largely neglected as ‘residual variance’ or studied in isolation. Here, I advocate that this variance provides a unique opportunity and promising starting point for a novel, pioneering approach in utilizing population heterogeneity as an opportunity to advance mechanistic insights into fear and anxiety-related processes beyond traditional confirmatory or refusive investigations on a-priori theories. This is implemented in a series of systematic, multi-methodological and -variate studies that combine well-established experimental paradigms with cutting-edge technical tools and methodological advances. Importantly, experimental design, participant selection and data analysis tools are tailored towards the detection of individual differences. The program will allow for the identification of empirically-based subgroups differing in observable behavioral, neurobiological or physiological responding in key processes implicated in fear and anxiety (FEAR PROFILES). These groups will subsequently be characterized with respect to the neurofunctional, neurostructural, biological, experiential and psychological factors (deep and digital phenotyping) which will be incorporated into a (partly longitudinal) predictive framework. I expect the results to make a unique contribution to a refined framework on the multicausal etiopathology of fear and anxiety and provide methodological advances for research into individual differences. Ultimately, I envision insights into subgroup specific mechanistic deficits to break the grounds for the future development of mechanistically-based intervention and prevention programs to reduce the ever-growing burden of anxiety disorders on society and the individual patient.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups