Assistant Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Anatomy & Cell Biology

Dr. Mitchell's research is principally aimed at determining how dissociable neural systems integrate emotion with cognition and behaviour. The work is designed to provide fundamental knowledge about the functional neuroanatomy behind the experience and control of emotions such as fear, anxiety, and anger. The approach is also used to elucidate the pathophysiology of a range of psychiatric disorders from psychopathy, which features impoverished affective responding and poor behavioural controls, to mood and anxiety disorders, which feature a failure to manage or modulate emotional responding. Our techniques include fMRI, MEG, psychophysiological, and neuropsychological methods in healthy individuals, patients with developmental or acute psychiatric disorders, and patients with acquired brain lesions.

Recent Publications:

Rich, B.A., Brotman, M.A., Dickstein, D.P., Mitchell, D.G.V., Blair, R.J.R., & Leibenluft, E. (2010). Deficits in Attention to Emotional Stimuli Distinguish Youth with Severe Mood Dysregulation from Youth with Bipolar Disorder. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Epub ahead of print.

Mitchell, D.G.V., Luo, Q., Avny, S.B., Kasprzycki, T., Gupta, K., Chen, G., Finger, E.C., Blair, R.J.R. (2009). Adapting to dynamic stimulus-response values: Differential contributions of inferior frontal, dorsomedial and dorsolateral regions of prefrontal cortex to decision making. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(35), 10827-10834.

Amting, J.M., Miller, J.E., Chow, M., & Mitchell, D.G.V. (2009). Getting mixed messages: The impact of conflicting social signals on the brain's target emotional response. NeuroImage, 47, 1950-1959.

Mitchell, D.G.V., Luo, J., Vythilingham, M., Finger, E. and Blair, R.J.R. (2008) The interference of operant task performance by emotional distracters: An antagonistic relationship between the amygdala and frontoparietal cortices. NeuroImage 40: 859-868.

Mitchell, D.G.V. , Richell, R.A., Pine, D. and Blair, R.J.R (2008) The contribution of ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to response reversal. Behavioural Brain Research 11; 187(1): 80-87.