Fox Lab Mission
Our feelings play a big role in our lives. Feelings help us choose, motivate our actions, and define our interactions with others. In this way, emotional tendencies define who we are now and who we are going to be in the future.
In the Fox lab, we want to understand the neurobiology of “affective style”. We want to understand why some people are afraid to leave the house, while others enjoy the feeling of danger. We want to understand why some people callously abuse, while others become overwhelmed with empathy. Understanding the biology of affective style, will lead us to a better understand humanity and help people make choices about who they want to be.
Much of our research aims to understand the biology that underlies dispositional anxiety. This kind of understanding could allow for specific interventions to ameliorate anxiety disorders and reduce the suffering of anxious individuals.
These goals are ambitious, and we are not the first to ask these questions. Unfortunately, despite their importance, progress toward finding answers has been slow. We hope that by embracing new tools, technologies, and discovery we can uncover what has been hidden from previous generations. To do this, the Fox lab for Translational Affective Neuroscience embraces principles of innovation, integration, and collaboration in conducting rigorous and open science.
Innovation¶
By embracing new approaches we will have our biggest impact on science. Recent advances in molecular and genetic techniques, in combination with an increasing digital world, provide the basis for dramatic advances in our understanding of the brain. Examples of innovative approaches used in the Fox lab include high-throughput computing, novel neuroimaging analytic approaches, neuronal RNA-sequencing, cellphone-based experience sampling, and designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs.
Integration¶
It is not enough to create new tools and utilize new techniques. Emotions do not exist in a void, and our studies shouldn’t either. Real progress requires integrating across orders of magnitude in both time and space, as well as across different laboratories and techniques. Integrative science demands that each finding and new approach inform the next. For example, our lab’s brain imaging studies inform molecular studies, and vice versa.
Collaboration¶
Make no mistake; this is an ambitious plan. This work is too complicated and too difficult to do alone. To make real scientific progress, and develop new insights into our emotions, we have to work as a team. Nobody in the Fox lab works alone. Our best work is done working alongside experts in different fields, with different backgrounds, and different perspectives on science and on life. A part of collaboration is sharing our findings with the future, and ensuring that our results represent reliable and replicable insights. To do this, in the Fox Lab, we strive to find new colleagues and collaborators, we work to make our science open, and we embrace criticism of our work.
If you are interested in joining the Fox Lab, click here.