ArticleNature human behaviour2019
Minimizing threat via heuristic and optimal policies recruits hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed.
- The effect of nicotine on threat avoidance behaviour in healthy non-smokers.Psychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Context-dependent feature modulation shapes human decision policies in approach-avoidance conflicts.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Towards an Integrative Framework of Self-Regulation: A Scoping Review on the Interplay Between Emotion Regulation, Executive Functions and Decision-Making in Clinical Populations.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Regional cerebral hypometabolism and pathological heterogeneity in sporadic early onset alzheimer's disease: China Aging and Neurodegenerative Initiative (CANDI) study.European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging · 2026Article
- Anhedonia buffers the effects of early-life unpredictability on threat-reward decision-making.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
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- Loss avoidance during social interactions.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Neural Representation of Associative Threat Learning in Pulvinar Divisions, Lateral Geniculate Nucleus, and Mediodorsal Thalamus in Humans.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- An intracranial dissection of human escape circuits.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Differential neural decoding of alarm and avoidance information from vocal alarm calls in humans.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Intersect between brain mechanisms of conditioned threat, active avoidance, and reward.Communications psychology · 2025Review
- Hippocampal damage disrupts the latent decision-making processes underlying approach-avoidance conflict processing in humans.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- A distributed subcortical circuit linked to instrumental information-seeking about threat.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Non-human contributions to personality neuroscience: From fish through primates - a concluding editorial overview.Personality neuroscience · 2024Article
- Functional sophistication in human escape.iScience · 2023Article
- Elucidating medial temporal and frontal lobe contributions to approach-avoidance conflict decision-making using functional MRI and the hierarchical drift diffusion model.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- A neuro-computational social learning framework to facilitate transdiagnostic classification and treatment across psychiatric disorders.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Decision heuristics in contexts integrating action selection and execution.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Incorporating social knowledge structures into computational models.Nature communications · 2022Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Jointly minimizing multiple threats over extended time horizons enhances survival. Consequently, many tests of approach-avoidance conflicts incorporate multiple threats for probing corollaries of animal and human anxiety. To facilitate computations necessary for threat minimization, the human brain may concurrently harness multiple decision policies and associated neural controllers, but it is unclear which. We combine a task that mimics foraging under predation with behavioural modelling and functional neuroimaging. Human choices rely on immediate predator probability-a myopic heuristic policy-and on the optimal policy, which integrates all relevant variables. Predator probability relates positively and the associated choice uncertainty relates negatively to activations in the anterior hippocampus, amygdala and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The optimal policy is positively associated with dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activity. We thus provide a decision-theoretic outlook on the role of the human hippocampus, amygdala and prefrontal cortex in resolving approach-avoidance conflicts relevant for anxiety and integral for survival.
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