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Anxiety-Like Behavioural Inhibition Is Normative under Environmental Threat-Reward Correlations
Behavioural inhibition is a key anxiety-like behaviour in rodents and humans, distinct from avoidance of danger, and reduced by anxiolytic drugs. In some situations, it is not clear how behavioural inhibition minimises harm or maximises benefit for the agent, and can even appear counterproductive. E...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2015
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4674090/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26650585 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004646 |
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author | Bach, Dominik R. |
author_facet | Bach, Dominik R. |
author_sort | Bach, Dominik R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Behavioural inhibition is a key anxiety-like behaviour in rodents and humans, distinct from avoidance of danger, and reduced by anxiolytic drugs. In some situations, it is not clear how behavioural inhibition minimises harm or maximises benefit for the agent, and can even appear counterproductive. Extant explanations of this phenomenon make use of descriptive models but do not provide a formal assessment of its adaptive value. This hampers a better understanding of the neural computations underlying anxiety behaviour. Here, we analyse a standard rodent anxiety model, the operant conflict test. We harvest Bayesian Decision Theory to show that behavioural inhibition normatively arises as cost-minimising strategy in temporally correlated environments. Importantly, only if behavioural inhibition is aimed at minimising cost, it depends on probability and magnitude of threat. Harnessing a virtual computer game, we test model predictions in four experiments with human participants. Humans exhibit behavioural inhibition with a strong linear dependence on threat probability and magnitude. Strikingly, inhibition occurs before motor execution and depends on the virtual environment, thus likely resulting from a neural optimisation process rather than a pre-programmed mechanism. Individual trait anxiety scores predict behavioural inhibition, underlining the validity of this anxiety model. These findings put anxiety behaviour into the context of cost-minimisation and optimal inference, and may ultimately pave the way towards a mechanistic understanding of the neural computations gone awry in human anxiety disorder. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4674090 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-46740902015-12-23 Anxiety-Like Behavioural Inhibition Is Normative under Environmental Threat-Reward Correlations Bach, Dominik R. PLoS Comput Biol Research Article Behavioural inhibition is a key anxiety-like behaviour in rodents and humans, distinct from avoidance of danger, and reduced by anxiolytic drugs. In some situations, it is not clear how behavioural inhibition minimises harm or maximises benefit for the agent, and can even appear counterproductive. Extant explanations of this phenomenon make use of descriptive models but do not provide a formal assessment of its adaptive value. This hampers a better understanding of the neural computations underlying anxiety behaviour. Here, we analyse a standard rodent anxiety model, the operant conflict test. We harvest Bayesian Decision Theory to show that behavioural inhibition normatively arises as cost-minimising strategy in temporally correlated environments. Importantly, only if behavioural inhibition is aimed at minimising cost, it depends on probability and magnitude of threat. Harnessing a virtual computer game, we test model predictions in four experiments with human participants. Humans exhibit behavioural inhibition with a strong linear dependence on threat probability and magnitude. Strikingly, inhibition occurs before motor execution and depends on the virtual environment, thus likely resulting from a neural optimisation process rather than a pre-programmed mechanism. Individual trait anxiety scores predict behavioural inhibition, underlining the validity of this anxiety model. These findings put anxiety behaviour into the context of cost-minimisation and optimal inference, and may ultimately pave the way towards a mechanistic understanding of the neural computations gone awry in human anxiety disorder. Public Library of Science 2015-12-09 /pmc/articles/PMC4674090/ /pubmed/26650585 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004646 Text en © 2015 Dominik R. Bach http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Bach, Dominik R. Anxiety-Like Behavioural Inhibition Is Normative under Environmental Threat-Reward Correlations |
title | Anxiety-Like Behavioural Inhibition Is Normative under Environmental Threat-Reward Correlations |
title_full | Anxiety-Like Behavioural Inhibition Is Normative under Environmental Threat-Reward Correlations |
title_fullStr | Anxiety-Like Behavioural Inhibition Is Normative under Environmental Threat-Reward Correlations |
title_full_unstemmed | Anxiety-Like Behavioural Inhibition Is Normative under Environmental Threat-Reward Correlations |
title_short | Anxiety-Like Behavioural Inhibition Is Normative under Environmental Threat-Reward Correlations |
title_sort | anxiety-like behavioural inhibition is normative under environmental threat-reward correlations |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4674090/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26650585 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004646 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT bachdominikr anxietylikebehaviouralinhibitionisnormativeunderenvironmentalthreatrewardcorrelations |