Conduct disorders and psychopathic traits in children and adolescent populations
Includes the development and/or adaptation of psychometric tools, the study of the precursors, the analysis of the predictive ability of psychopathy diagnosis and the testing of neurobiological hypotheses based in the Behavioural Inhibition System and the Behavioural Activation System. We have recently included the study of vulnerability biomarkers such as fear conditioning and the endocrine responses to stress.
Adaptation and standardization of instruments for the diagnostic and the psychological evaluation
This line of research offers to the scientific community some instruments of evaluation in research and clinical settings by means of the adaptation to our cultural context of questionnaires already published in other countries or the construction of new psychometric instruments.
Psychophysiology of the vulnerability to anxiety disorders
Investigation in subclinical populations of the basic psychological mechanisms involved in the processes of acquisition of fear and anxiety, using the startle reflex and electrodermal activity as indexes of affective processing.
Neurobiological correlates of mental disorders by means of neuroimaging tools
Studies, by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging, of the brain processes related to mental disorders (fundamentally anxiety) and of possible vulnerability factors to suffer these disorders.