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Christine Larson

  • Acting Director of Undergraduate Studies, Psychology, Psychological & Brain Sciences
  • Area Head, Clinical Psychology

Education

PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2003

Courses Taught

  • PSYCH 412 - Psychopathology
  • PSYCH 611 - The Science of Human Emotions
  • PSYCH 912 - Developmental Psychopathology

Research Interests

Dr. Larson's laboratory, the Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, is dedicated to understanding the neural bases of healthy and pathological emotional processing.  Currently, her research program is focused primarily on characterizing individual differences in emotional and cognitive processing that confer risk for mental health concerns following trauma in adults and youth. The team also investigates socioenvironmental factors such as neighborhood disadvantage and racial discrimination, and how these factors are related to risk for PTSD and individual differences in neural circuitry for emotion regulation. This work is conducted as part of a multi-institutional research team, the Milwaukee Trauma Outcomes Project (https://milwaukeetrauma.com). Dr. Larson also collaborates with Dr. Hanjoo Lee to examine the impact of response inhibition training on neural circuitry supporting response inhibition among individuals with obsessive compulsive related disorders.  The laboratory uses neuroimaging, psychophysiological, behavioral, and self-report tools to examine these questions.

Selected Publications

Huggins, A. A., Harvey, A. M., Miskovich, T. A., Lee, H. J., & Larson, C. L.(2020) Resting-state functional connectivity of supplementary motor area associated with skin-picking symptom severity.JOURNAL OF OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE AND RELATED DISORDERS, 26.
Lotfi, S. , Ward, R. T., Ayazi, M. , Bennett, K. P., Larson, C. L., & Lee, H. (2020) The Effects of Emotional Working Memory Training on Worry Symptoms and Error-Related Negativity of Individuals with High Trait Anxiety: A Randomized Controlled Study.COGNITIVE THERAPY AND RESEARCH.
Belleau, E. L., Pedersen, W. S., Miskovich, T. A., Helmstetter, F. J., & Larson, C. L.(2018) Cortico-limbic connectivity changes following fear extinction and relationships with trait anxiety.SOCIAL COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE, 13(10), 1037-1046.
Bennett, K. P., Dickmann, J. S., & Larson, C. L.(2018) If or when? Uncertainty's role in anxious anticipation.PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY, 55(7).
Weis, C. , Belleau, E. L., Pedersen, W. S., Miskovich, T. A., & Larson, C. L.(2018) Structural connectivity of the posterior cingulum is related to re-experiencing symptoms in PTSD.Chronic Stress, 2, 1-9.
Pedersen, W. S., Muftuler, L. T., & Larson, C. L.(2017) Disentangling the effects of novelty, valence and trait anxiety in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, amygdala and hippocampus with high resolution 7T fMRI.NEUROIMAGE, 156, 293-301.
Pedersen, W. S., Balderston, N. L., Miskovich, T. A., Belleau, E. L., Helmstetter, F. J., & Larson, C. L.(2017) Disentangling the effects of stimulus novelty and affective valence in the amygdala, hippocampus, and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis.Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience., 12(5), 748-757.
Stout, D. M., Shackman, A. J., Pedersen, W. S., Miskovich, T. A., & Larson, C. L.(2017) Neural circuitry governing anxious individuals' mis-allocation of working memory to threat.SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, 7.
Belleau, E. , Taubitz, L. E., & Larson, C. L.(2015) Imbalance of default mode and regulatory networks during externally-focused processing in depression.Social, Cognitive, & Affective Neuroscience, 10(5), 744-751.
Stout, D. , Shackman, A. J., Johnson, J. , & Larson, C. L.(2015) Worry is associated with impaired gating of threat from working memory.Emotion, 15, 6-11.
Stout, D. M., Shackman, A. J., & Larson, C. L.(2013) Failure to filter: Anxious individuals show inefficient gating of threat from working memory.Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7.
Larson, C. L., Baskin-Sommers, A. R., Stout, D. M., Balderston, N. L., Schultz, D. H., Curtin, J. J., Kiehl, K. A., & Newman, J. P.(2013) The interplay of attention and emotion: Top-down attention modulates amygdala activation in psychopathy.Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 13, 757-770.
Larson, C. L., Aronoff, J. , Sarinopoulos, I. C., & Zhu, D. C.(2009) Recognizing threat: Simple geometric shapes activate neural circuitry underlying threat detection.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 1523-1535.
Larson, C. L., Aronoff, J. , Stearns, J. , & (2007) The shape of threat: Simple geometric forms evoke rapid and sustained capture of attention.Emotion, 7, 526-534.
Larson, C. L., Schaefer, H. S., Siegle, G. J., Cory, J. A., Anderle, M. J., & Davidson, R. J.(2006) Fear is fast in phobic individuals: Amygdala activation in response to fear-relevant stimuli.Biological Psychiatry, 60, 410-417.
Davidson, R. J., Putnam, K. M., Larson, C. L., , & (2000) Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of emotion regulation—A possible prelude to violence.Science, 289, 591-594.

UWM Land Acknowledgement: We acknowledge in Milwaukee that we are on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee homeland along the southwest shores of Michigami, North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida and Mohican nations remain present.   |   To learn more, visit the Electa Quinney Institute website.