VR & PTSD, Trauma, and Resilience

Dr. Suarez-Jimenez is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Rochester. His research program in the ZVR lab aims to use virtual reality (VR), multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and machine learning to elucidate the psychological and neural signatures of PTSD and anxiety disorders. Particularly, to delineate the contextual aspect of threat and reward learning, discrimination, and monitoring. He is specifically interested in the case where an area within a larger environment becomes associated with threat, such as the area of a neighborhood where an assault or assaults took place, or location on a battlefield where explosions occurred. Patients with PTSD and anxiety disorders often show an overgeneralization or an exaggerated response to threat in larger contexts, even in environments predicting safety. With this research, he plans to identify new brain measures to develop sensitive, personalized, and precise diagnostic and treatment tools for psychology. He was recently awarded a $3.5 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to build upon work in the ZVR lab.

Suarez-Jimenez came to the University in January 2021. He is an active member of the Neuroscience Diversity Commission and has served as a mentor for the NEUROCITY program.

The Voices of XR speaker series is made possible by Kathy McMorran Murray and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT) program as part of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Training in the Science, Technology, and Applications of Augmented and Virtual Reality at the University of Rochester (#1922591).