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Lab Director:
Hannah Berg, PhD
The Berg Lab at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research (LIBR) in Tulsa, OK, directed by Dr. Hannah Berg, is a research laboratory with the goal of understanding the decision-making processes that drive anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We investigate how the human brain responds to threats, and the complex ways this can influence our behavior. Our mission is to improve mental health through neuroscience.
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If you are interested in joining our team or participating in a research study, click here. To learn more about our team, click here. To read about our mission and recent publications, click here. For lab news and updates, see below.
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Lab News
10/12/2026 Milestone: We have completed data collection for our NIGMS-funded research project examining the neural basis of compulsion-like behavior in OCD! We are grateful to our research participants who made this research possible.
7/24/2026 Welcome to our new research assistant, Ava! Within just a few months of starting in the lab, Ava conducted an independent data analysis and won Judges' Choice Award at LIBR's annual Research Day. The Berg Lab is on a winning streak!​
5/27/2026 📣 NEW PAPER! 📣 "Anxiety sensitivity and intolerance of uncertainty track distinct neurobehavioral dimensions of avoidance in anxiety-related disorders."​ This paper, published with Dr. Shmuel Lissek and collaborators at the University of Minnesota, investigates avoidance in a sample of adults with and without anxiety-related disorders (ARDs; i.e., anxiety disorders, OCD, and PTSD). Whereas those with greater anxiety sensitivity showed greater generalization of neural activity associated with learned fear, those with greater intolerance of certainty showed behavior that was less predicable from neural activity during mental simulation. These findings help us understand neurobehavioral patterns that cut across diagnoses, with implications for personalized treatment.
2/25/2026 📣 NEW PAPER! 📣 "The Tap-to-Safety Task: A Novel fMRI Paradigm Assessing Repetitive Threat-Neutralization."​ The Tap-To-Safety Task is a tool that assesses repetitive threat-neutralization behavior - repetitive, effortful actions we take to prevent a feared outcome. This tool will enable us to identify patterns of brain activity underlying clinically-relevant behaviors such as compulsions in OCD, and how they relate to symptom maintenance and improvement. In our peer-reviewed paper, published in Human Brain Mapping, repetitive threat-neutralization behavior generalized from threat cues to safe stimuli resembling the threat cues, tracked with neural activity in brain regions associated with salience and decision-making.
10/10/25 Dr. Berg and Riley presented our latest work at the Zarrow Mental Health Symposium, hosted by Mental Health Association Oklahoma. We had a well-attended talk with lots of discussion on how our results relate to treatment of OCD and anxiety-related disorders.
​7/31/25 LIBR Research Day featured a talk (Riley) and two posters (Annette, Nate) from the Berg Lab! Congrats to Nate on winning the Judges' Choice Award!
6/1/24 Welcome to our LASR intern, Nate!
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8/27/24 Welcome to our new volunteer, Annette!
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6/3/24 Welcome to our new research assistant, Riley!
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3/20/24 As part of LIBR's Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) Award, sponsored by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, we will be assessing the neural underpinnings of compulsion-like behavior in adults with and without obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).​
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1/30/24 We receive LIBR pilot funding to develop the Tap-To-Safety Task.​
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1/2/24 The Berg Lab is launched at LIBR!
