Stress and Anxiety Research Lab

The Stress and Anxiety Research Lab (STAR Lab) is directed by Prof. Alexandre Heeren at the Psychological Sciences Research Institute & Institute of Neuroscience of UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. The lab focuses on basic and translational research surrounding the cognitive and affective features of anxiety and stress-related phenomena via quantitative modeling, experimental, and neuroscientific approaches. Of note, most of our recent projects have focused on climate change anxiety. Of note, a large part of our recent research (since 2022) has started focusing on climate change anxiety and other anxiety- and stress-related phenomena one can experience vis-à-vis climate change. 

​Our lab approach to these anxiety- and stress-related phenomena focus on 1) the elucidation of their neurocognitive and affective mechanisms (e.g., attentional bias, worry, emotion regulation, top-down attention control, family transmission), 2) the use of quantitative modeling approaches (e.g., network analysis, time-series) to clarify their temporal dynamics and the way they can trigger one another over time; 3) the elucidation of their adaptive (e.g., resilience) and maladaptive (e.g., threat to mental health, lack of adaptation) correlates; 4) the examination of their potential involvement in other mental and neurological disorders (e.g., depression, addiction, tinnitus), as well as 4,) several translational research agendas (e.g., neuromodulation, cognitive training) aiming at targeting these mechanisms to mitigate these maladaptive anxiety- and stress-related phenomena.