ReviewTrends in cognitive sciences2021
A Decision Architecture for Safety Computations.
Review in Trends in cognitive sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed.
- Oxytocin Reduces Subjective Fear in Naturalistic Social Contexts via Enhancing Top-Down Middle Cingulate Amygdala Regulation and Brain-Wide Fear Representations.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Trial
- Age-related differences in hippocampal network engagement during safety processing in adolescents.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- The emergence of neuropsychiatric symptoms in preclinical Alzheimer's disease: An emotion regulation perspective.Neuron · 2026Review
- Safety-relevant experience reshapes neural codes for ambiguous threat in adolescents.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and amygdala underlies avoidance learning during adolescence: Implications for developmental psychopathology.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Neural anticipation of virtual infection triggers an immune response.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- An intracranial dissection of human escape circuits.Nature communications · 2025Article
- α1 Adrenergic Receptors Mediate Panic-like Defensive Behavior in Alcohol-Drinking but Not Alcohol-Naïve Rats.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Pavlovian safety learning: An integrative theoretical review.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Subregions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex integrate threat and protective information to meta-represent safety.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Investigating the effect of continuous and partial reinforcement in conceptual fear generalization.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Adaptive Safety Coding in the Prefrontal Cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- The ventromedial prefrontal cortex in response to threat omission is associated with subsequent explicit safety memory.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Towards a Real-Life Understanding of the Altered Functional Behaviour of the Default Mode and Salience Network in Chronic Pain: Are People with Chronic Pain Overthinking the Meaning of Their Pain?Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Review
- Article
- Maternal Perinatal Stress Associated With Offspring Negative Emotionality, But the Underlying Mechanisms Remain Elusive.The American journal of psychiatry · 2023Article
- Understanding anxiety symptoms as aberrant defensive responding along the threat imminence continuum.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- The nature and neurobiology of fear and anxiety: State of the science and opportunities for accelerating discovery.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Anxiety as a disorder of uncertainty: implications for understanding maladaptive anxiety, anxious avoidance, and exposure therapy.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Activated Tryptophan-Kynurenine metabolic system in the human brain is associated with learned fear.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Accurately estimating safety is critical to pursuing nondefensive survival behaviors. However, little attention has been paid to how the human brain computes safety. We conceptualize a model that consists of two components: (i) threat-oriented evaluations that focus on threat value, imminence, and predictability; and (ii) self-oriented evaluations that focus on the agent's experience, strategies, and ability to control the situation. Our model points to the dynamic interaction between these two components as a mechanism of safety estimation. Based on a growing body of human literature, we hypothesize that distinct regions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) respond to threat and safety to facilitate survival decisions. We suggest safety is not an inverse of danger, but reflects independent computations that mediate defensive circuits and behaviors.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.