Center for Healthy Minds

Dates of Employment: September 2011 - December 2013

Drew is a former Assistant Scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds. Drew is interested in emotional style and how dispositional emotional and pro-social tendencies guide behavior for better, or for worse. During his graduate career, he used functional and structural brain imaging in both humans and rhesus monkeys (Macaque mulatta) to understand the biology that gives rise to trait-like anxious behavior early in life. This is a particularly important issue, as children with an anxious disposition are at risk to develop anxiety and depressive disorders later in life. Eventually, Drew hopes his research leads to novel ways of triggering these brain systems to help reduce suffering.

Drew is currently a faculty member in the Psychology department at University of California, Davis.

Selected Publications

Fox AS, Oler JA, Shackman AJ, Shelton SE, Raveendran M, McKay DR, Converse AK, Alexander AL, Davidson RJ, Blangero J, Rogers J, & Kalin NH (2015). Intergenerational neural mediators of early-life anxious temperament. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112(29):9118-9122

Fox AS, Oler JA, Tromp DPM, Fudge J, & Kalin NH (2015). Extending the amygdala in theories of threat processing. Trends in Neurosciences. 38(5)

Fox AS & Kalin NH (2014). A Translational Neuroscience Approach to Understanding the Development of Social Anxiety Disorder and Its Pathophysiology. American Journal of Psychiatry. 171(11):1162–1173

Fox AS, Oler JA, Shelton SE, Nanda SA, Davidson RJ, Roseboom PH, Kalin NH (2012). Central amygdala nucleus (Ce) gene expression linked to increased trait-like Ce metabolism and anxious temperament in young primates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109(44):18108–18113