Professor Earns Impressive NIH Grant for Important Study

Dr. David C. Johnson, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Sciences, was recently awarded $475,000 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The professor says the grant will fund research that “hopes to shed light on the well-documented” gender disparity in stress and anxiety disorders, reported to be two to four times more prevalent in females than in males. He highlighted the unclear reasons behind this disparity.

“Why women show such higher rates of anxiety disorder compared to men is not very well understood,” he said. “While there are undoubtedly multiple factors involved, evidence from human and animal research suggests sex hormones, such as estrogen, and stress hormones, such as cortisol, interact to play an important role in crucial learning and memory processes.”

Dr. Johnson’s research focuses on "fear extinction learning," or the ability to regulate and extinguish negative memories associated with trauma. He uses an experimental methodology that involves participants learning to associate previously neutral stimuli with aversive outcomes (e.g., electric shocks) and then returning to the lab to extinguish that fear.

“Failure to effectively extinguish memories associated with traumatic experiences can set the stage for the emergence of fear-related disorders, such as PTSD,” he said. “Furthermore, the most effective non-pharmacological treatment for these disorders (exposure therapy) is based on the principles of fear extinction learning.”

Dr. Johnson and his team will be testing a method that could enhance extinction, potentially setting the stage for optimized therapies.