Our long-range goal is to understand how cognitive and emotional brain systems interact in the generation of complex behavior. As a step forward to this goal, we are currently investigating how visual attention and emotional processing interact in the brain. Cognitive and emotional systems have been largely considered to function separately from one another. However, a deeper understanding of the brain function and associated behavior requires studying interactions between the systems. Recent techniques, including functional neuroimaging (such as fMRI), allow the study of several brain systems simultaneously and pave the way for the study of interactions in the brain. By studying cognitive-emotional interactions we expect to make contributions to understanding the neural basis of behavior. At the same time, we expect our work to have clinical implications. For example, a better understanding of emotion-attention interactions may have implications in the treatment of phobias and posttraumatic stress disorder, because a better understanding of the basic mechanisms would be expected to clarify the processes leading to the onset of syndromes.