ArticleBiological psychiatry2017
Modeling Avoidance in Mood and Anxiety Disorders Using Reinforcement Learning.
Article in Biological psychiatry, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
70 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 150 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Overlapping Neurobiology of Induced and Pathological Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis of Functional Neural Activation.The American journal of psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Great Expectations: A Critical Review of and Suggestions for the Study of Reward Processing as a Cause and Predictor of Depression.Biological psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Clinical Efficacy and Psychological Mechanisms of an App-Based Digital Therapeutic for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Trial
- Effectiveness of mental simulations on the early mobilization of patients after cesarean section: a randomized controlled trial.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- Computational modelling reveals contrasting effects on reinforcement learning and cognitive flexibility in stimulant use disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder: remediating effects of dopaminergic D2/3 receptor agents.Psychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Trial
- Early reduction in aversive Pavlovian bias as a mediator of anhedonia improvement during Behavioural Activation in realistic treatment settings.PLoS computational biology · 2026Observational
- cpm: A python library for theory-driven modelling in computational psychiatry.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Fleeing is believing: adaptive behavior under social threat as an inference process.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2026Article
- Neural Bases of Affect-Based Impulsivity: A Decision Neuroscience Account.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Review
- Computational Modelling Reveals Slower Safety Learning and Threat Extinction are Associated With Higher Anxiety Severity in Remote Fear Conditioning.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Pavlovian bias is associated with symptom severity but not diagnostic status in individuals with both anxious and non-anxious depression.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Article
- Intertemporal Pavlovian biases and links with mental health in the general population.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Depression Levels Are Associated with Reduced Capacity to Learn to Actively Avoid Aversive Events in Young Adults.eNeuro · 2025Article
- Psychological distance affects real movements in virtual reality: distance to food in anorexia nervosa.Journal of eating disorders · 2025Article
- Past suicide attempt is associated with a weaker decision-making bias to actively escape from suicide-related stimuli.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2025Article
- Agent-Based Behavioral Modeling of Human Associative Learning in a Complex Approach-Avoidance Conflict Task.Computational brain & behavior · 2025Article
- Pavlovian impatience: The anticipation of immediate rewards increases approach behaviour.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Behavioral and Brain Mechanisms of Active Avoidance and Their Relevance to Anxiety Disorders.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundSerious and debilitating symptoms of anxiety are the most common mental health problem worldwide, accounting for around 5% of all adult years lived with disability in the developed world. Avoidance behavior-avoiding social situations for fear of embarrassment, for instance-is a core feature of such anxiety. However, as for many other psychiatric symptoms the biological mechanisms underlying avoidance remain unclear.
methodsReinforcement learning models provide formal and testable characterizations of the mechanisms of decision making; here, we examine avoidance in these terms. A total of 101 healthy participants and individuals with mood and anxiety disorders completed an approach-avoidance go/no-go task under stress induced by threat of unpredictable shock.
resultsWe show an increased reliance in the mood and anxiety group on a parameter of our reinforcement learning model that characterizes a prepotent (pavlovian) bias to withhold responding in the face of negative outcomes. This was particularly the case when the mood and anxiety group was under stress.
conclusionsThis formal description of avoidance within the reinforcement learning framework provides a new means of linking clinical symptoms with biophysically plausible models of neural circuitry and, as such, takes us closer to a mechanistic understanding of mood and anxiety disorders.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.