ArticleBiological psychiatry2020
Anticipatory Threat Responding: Associations With Anxiety, Development, and Brain Structure.
Article in Biological psychiatry, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed, 80 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Data on electrophysiological responses and psychological reactions to 3D audio scenes and unpleasant International Affective Picture System images stimulation.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Structural Brain Correlates of Childhood Inhibited Temperament: An ENIGMA-Anxiety Mega-Analysis.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2026Article
- Developmental differences in threat learning are associated with changes in frontal-central theta activity.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- Functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and amygdala underlies avoidance learning during adolescence: Implications for developmental psychopathology.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- A Multi-Component Model of Emotion Response Convergence: Implications for the Development of Psychopathology.Emotion review : journal of the International Society for Research on Emotion · 2025Article
- Fear extinction retention in children, adolescents, and adults.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- The Organization of Anxiety Symptoms Along the Threat Imminence Continuum.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- A preliminary study of threat-anticipatory responding in Latina youth: associations with age, anxiety, and cortical thickness.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Alterations in fear learning as a mechanism linking childhood exposure to violence with PTSD symptoms: a longitudinal study.Psychological medicine · 2024Article
- Threat Appraisal and Pediatric Anxiety: Proof of Concept of a Latent Variable Approach.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- Independence Threat or Interdependence Threat? The Focusing Effect on Social or Physical Threat Modulates Brain Activity.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Understanding anxiety symptoms as aberrant defensive responding along the threat imminence continuum.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Breaking the Fear Barrier: Aberrant Activity of Fear Networks as a Prognostic Biomarker in Patients with Panic Disorder Normalized by Pharmacotherapy.Biomedicines · 2023Article
- The Role of Emotion Regulation and Executive Functioning in the Intervention Outcome of Children with Emotional and Behavioural Problems.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Getting Better with Age? A Review of Psychophysiological Studies of Fear Extinction Learning Across Development.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2023Review
- Emotions as computations.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Fear-potentiated startle reveals diminished threat extinction in pathological anxiety.International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology · 2023Article
- Understanding clinical fear and anxiety through the lens of human fear conditioning.Nature reviews psychology · 2023Review
- Extinction Learning Across Development: Neurodevelopmental Changes and Implications for Pediatric Anxiety Disorders.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 6 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundWhile translational theories link neurodevelopmental changes in threat learning to pathological anxiety, findings from studies in patients inconsistently support these theories. This inconsistency may reflect difficulties in studying large patient samples with wide age ranges using consistent methods. A dearth of imaging data in patients further limits translational advances. We address these gaps through a psychophysiology and structural brain imaging study in a large sample of patients across the lifespan.
methodsA total of 351 participants (8-50 years of age; 209 female subjects; 195 healthy participants and 156 medication-free, treatment-seeking patients with anxiety) completed a differential threat conditioning and extinction paradigm that has been validated in pediatric and adult populations. Skin conductance response indexed psychophysiological response to conditioned (CS+, CS-) and unconditioned threat stimuli. Structural magnetic resonance imaging data were available for 250 participants. Analyses tested anxiety and age associations with psychophysiological response in addition to associations between psychophysiology and brain structure.
resultsRegardless of age, patients and healthy comparison subjects demonstrated comparable differential threat conditioning and extinction. The magnitude of skin conductance response to both conditioned stimulus types differentiated patients from comparison subjects and covaried with dorsal prefrontal cortical thickness; structure-response associations were moderated by anxiety and age in several regions. Unconditioned responding was unrelated to anxiety and brain structure.
conclusionsRather than impaired threat learning, pathological anxiety involves heightened skin conductance response to potential but not immediately present threats; this anxiety-related potentiation of anticipatory responding also relates to variation in brain structure. These findings inform theoretical considerations by highlighting anticipatory response to potential threat in anxiety.
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