What is the biology of fear, the emotional response that drives so much behavior in humans and animals alike? Our guest on this edition of FOCUS In Sound, Dr. Kerry Ressler, is determined to answer that question, and in doing so to help the millions of people who suffer from fear-based disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorder. Kerry is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He is also on the faculty of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience in Atlanta, and directs the Grady Trauma Project, which is a major study of the gene-environment interactions underlying post-traumatic stress disorder, which involves patients at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. In 2006, he received a five-year Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research. In 2007, he was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Kerry’s lab at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory is focused on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of fear learning and the process of extinction of fear in mouse models. He hopes that by understanding how fear works in the brain, it will improve our understanding of and advance treatments for fear-based
disorders.