Understanding how fear and anxiety work in the human brain
Official title: Fractionating human defensive circuits across changing levels of threat imminence
Funded at California Institute of Technology · NIH-11323045 · Data updated 2026-11-12
A research project at Caltech is studying how the brain and body respond to different levels of threat to better understand fear and anxiety in people.
Quick facts
| Grant type | NIH-funded research |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | California Institute of Technology NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Pasadena, United States) |
| Project start | June 12, 2023 |
| Project end | April 30, 2028 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $1,226,305 |
| NIH project number | 4RF1MH133730-04 |
| Project ID | NIH-11323045 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal candidates are adults with anxiety-related symptoms who may participate in brain imaging and behavioral studies centered on fear and threat processing.
✕Less likely to help
Individuals without anxiety-related symptoms or those unable to participate in brain-imaging tasks may not benefit from this research.
What this research studies
Researchers will develop new ways to study how humans feel fear and anxiety and how the brain represents these emotions across varying danger levels. They will create richer behavioral tasks and measurements to better connect what we feel with what the brain does, especially in men and women. The study will focus on how defensive responses change from potential threat to acute threat and how sex differences may influence these brain-behavior patterns. This work aims to bridge gaps between animal findings and human emotion studies by directly examining human defensive circuits. The project runs through 2023 to 2028 at Caltech with a multidisciplinary team.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could lead to better diagnosis and treatment of anxiety disorders by revealing how threat processing differs across individuals and situations.
How similar studies have gone: Previous research has shown that distinguishing different threat responses in humans can be feasible, but this project aims to fractionate them more precisely.
Where this research is happening
-
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Mobbs, Dean — California Institute of Technology
- Study coordinator: Mobbs, Dean
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.