Psychophysiology. Science. Brain & Behavior.
The NIMH Center for the Study of Emotion & Attention is devoted to studying the behavior and physiology of human emotion, highlighting emotion’s motivational significance for both attention and response mobilization. Guided by a motivational model of emotion, which proposes that an appetitive motive system mediates pleasant affect and a defense motive system mediates unpleasant affects, the Center’s research goals are to elucidate the functions and mechanisms of the defense system, as it determines human fear and anxiety.
