Goal of my research is to contribute understanding the underlying mechanisms as well as the risk factors involved in the etiology and maintenance of psychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorders, trauma- and stressor-related disorders, and feeding and eating disorders. Classical conditioning has been proposed as a simple laboratory model involved in these disorders. I have been applying this learning protocol mainly in healthy individuals investigating which factors may alter such learning and possibly lead to pathology. Specifically, I focus on personality traits, genetic polymorphisms and stress.