The ultimate goal of our work at the Stress, Cognition, and Affective Neuroscience Science (SCAN) Laboratory at the University of New Orleans is to inform prevention, mitigation, and treatment of adult mental illness by identifying and understanding risk factors in childhood. To this end, we study how the physiological effects of anxiety and stress influence development and health in populations of children at risk for serious mental illness in adulthood such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. It’s important to note that stress in childhood does not directly cause mental illness in adulthood but, for some children, severe or chronic stress interacts with other risk factors related to genetics, temperament, and experience to increase the likelihood of psychopathology. In our research we use a variety of tools including functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), as well as behavioral, psychophysiological, hormonal, immunological, and cognitive measures.
