CSEA MISSION STATEMENT
The CSEA has been an NIMH Center for Behavioral Science Research since September 1994. Dr. Peter J. Lang is the Center Director, and the main administrative site is located at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
The broad aim of the Center is to study emotional stimulus processing in all its directly measurable manifestations, i.e., as affective report, behavior, and patterns of expressive physiology (facial, visceral, and neuromuscular), and to understand the relation of these processing measures to functional changes in the brain. An important further aim is to study the interaction of emotional reactivity with attentional demands as attention is modulated by stimulus characteristics, motivational state, and the behavioral and social context. A theoretical model of emotion and motivation, based on neuroscience research with animals, guides analyses of human affect. Connecting links are sought through human electrocortical and brain imaging (fMRI) studies.
In addition to its own research projects, the Center provides broad services to the field, developing stimulus materials and advancing laboratory technology, training research apprentices, fostering scientific communication, and generally facilitating emotion studies within this country and internationally. The Center investigators have a special concern with translational research in the moving of basic scientific knowledge on emotion into the mental health arena. Thus, there is a subfocus on maladaptive emotional states, characterized by exaggerated intensity or persistence, as in the anxiety disorders, and on the converse condition, apparent deficit in emotional responding, as in psychopathy.
