ArticleNature communications2026
Devaluation of response-produced safety signals reveals circuits for goal-directed versus habitual avoidance in dorsal striatum.
Article in Nature communications, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Intersect between brain mechanisms of conditioned threat, active avoidance, and reward.Communications psychology · 2025Review
- Behavioral outputs and overlapping circuits between conditional fear and active avoidance.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2024Review
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9 authors.
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Abstract
Active avoidance responses (ARs) are instrumental behaviors that prevent harm. Adaptive ARs may contribute to active coping, whereas maladaptive avoidance habits are implicated in anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders. The AR learning mechanism has remained elusive, as successful avoidance trials produce no obvious reinforcer. We used a novel outcome-devaluation procedure in rats to show that ARs are positively reinforced by response-produced feedback cues that develop into safety signals during training. Males were sensitive to feedback devaluation after moderate training, but not overtraining, consistent with a transition from goal-directed to habitual avoidance. Using chemogenetics and feedback devaluation, we also show that goal-directed vs. habitual ARs depend on dorsomedial vs. dorsolateral striatum, suggesting a significant overlap between the mechanisms of avoidance and rewarded instrumental behavior. Females were insensitive to feedbackdevaluation due to a remarkable context-dependence of counterconditioning. However, degrading the contingency between avoidance and feedback suggests that both sexes rely on safety signals to perform goal-directed ARs.
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