Michael Crowley is an Associate Professor at the Yale School of Medicine's Child Study Center, where he has been a faculty member since 2008. His work focuses on key questions in social and affective neuroscience with an emphasis on child psychology. Dr. Crowley earned his doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2004, where he studied under Nathan Fox. Clinically, he completed a child-focused clinical internship through the Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center Training Program in Child Neuropsychiatric Disorders under Linda Mayes, M.D. Dr. Crowley's research primarily investigates child anxiety and the neural substrates of avoidance, threat detection, and worry. He is particularly interested in how treatment might lead to brain changes for these factors in child anxiety and how biofeedback can supplement traditional approaches. His research methodology heavily utilizes dense array electroencephalography, peripheral physiology, and functional imaging in his work with children and adolescents. His work demonstrates a strong integration of computational modeling with traditional neuroscience approaches to understand attentional biases and emotional processing in youth. Dr. Crowley's recent publications reveal a consistent focus on neural mechanisms underlying anxiety disorders, with particular emphasis on social anxiety in adolescents. His work increasingly incorporates driving simulation studies, computational modeling of decision-making processes, and advanced EEG analysis techniques to understand attentional processes. He has made significant contributions to understanding how neural responses to social exclusion, risk avoidance behaviors, and attentional biases relate to anxiety symptoms in youth. NARSAD Young Investigator award Dr. Crowley has received continuous funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He serves as a Sub Investigator on multiple clinical trials including studies on irritability in young adults, comprehensive therapy for teenagers with autism, and biomarkers for obsessive-compulsive disorder. His research collaborations include prominent Yale faculty members such as Linda Mayes, Federico Vaca, Barbara Banz, Helena Rutherford, and Marc Potenza. Dr. Crowley is affiliated with the Developmental Neurocognitive Driving Simulation Research Center (DrivSim Lab) and the Center for Brain & Mind Health at Yale, where he conducts research using advanced neuroimaging techniques to understand developmental psychopathology.
