Faculty, Staff and Student Publications
Publication Date
2-26-2025
Journal
Communications Psychology
Abstract
Active avoidance is a core behavior for human coping, and its excess is common across psychiatric diseases. The decision to actively avoid a threat is influenced by cost and reward. Yet, threat, avoidance, and reward have been studied in silos. We discuss behavioral and brain circuits of active avoidance and the interactions with fear and threat. In addition, we present a neural toggle switch model enabling fear-to-anxiety transition and approaching reward vs. avoiding harm decision. To fully comprehend how threat, active avoidance, and reward intersect, it is paramount to develop one shared experimental approach across phenomena and behaviors, which will ultimately allow us to better understand human behavior and pathology.
DOI
10.1038/s44271-025-00197-7
PMID
40011644
PMCID
PMC11864974
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
2-26-2025
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Post-print
Published Open-Access
yes
Included in
Medical Sciences Commons, Mental and Social Health Commons, Psychiatry Commons, Psychiatry and Psychology Commons