Mr Shaun Kit Lung Quah

Interests

Trait anxiety is the enduring disposition of feeling stress, worry, and discomfort and has been proposed to confer an increased vulnerability to developing anxiety disorders. The study of the neural mechanisms underlying trait anxiety is necessary to expand our understanding of pathological anxiety and to improve treatment methods for various mood and anxiety disorders.

Recent research in our lab implicated highly complex individual differences in the altered functioning of distinct prefrontal regions contributing to the high trait anxious phenotype.

Building on these previous findings, the first phase of this project uses brain samples from the original trait anxiety study to investigate the relationship between the gene expression of different components of the serotonergic system in brain areas highly associated with anxiety disorders and the high trait anxiety phenotypes mentioned previously.

Research Focus

Equipment

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)