Dr. Phan has a longstanding commitment to translate discoveries from affective and cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychopharmacology to improve our understanding and treatment of anxiety and mood disorders. He has particular expertise in traumatic stress and anxiety. He is dedicated to bring new and better treatments to the clinic.
Dr. Phan and his research team understands that emotions have a powerful role in tuning our perception, imbuing our experience, guiding our decisions, and shaping our actions. As such, they believe that anxiety, fear, depression, addiction, obsessions and compulsions can be understood along dimensions of emotion that evolve over the lifespan and fluctuate with stress. They use neuroscience measures and methods to study the emotional brain and its readouts in the laboratory and the real world, and marry this approach with psychopharmacology, neuromodulation and intervention trials. The team primarily uses magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI, DTI, sMRI), electroencephalography (EEG) of event-related potentials (ERP), and other psychophysiological tools to assess brain circuit function as they relate to emotion, affect regulation and motivation. Their work seeks to better understand the neuropathophysiology and course of psychopathology, and to innovate strategies to prevent and treat more patients better and faster and keep them well for longer periods of time.
