Renewal of fear and avoidance in humans to escalating threat: Implications for translational research on anxiety disorders.

Exposure-based treatment for threat avoidance in anxiety disorders often results in fear renewal. However, little is known about renewal of avoidance. This multimodal laboratory-based treatment study used an ABA renewal design and an approach-avoidance (AP-AV) task to examine renewal of fear/threat and avoidance in twenty adults.

"Watch out!": Effects of instructed threat and avoidance on human free-operant approach-avoidance behavior.

Approach-avoidance paradigms create a competition between appetitive and aversive contingencies and are widely used in nonhuman research on anxiety. Here, we examined how instructions about threat and avoidance impact control by competing contingencies over human approach-avoidance behavior. Additionally, Experiment 1 examined the effects of threat magnitude (money loss amount) and avoidance cost (fixed ratio requirements), whereas Experiment 2 examined the effects of threat information (available, unavailable and inaccurate) on approach-avoidance.

The tipping point: Value differences and parallel dorsal-ventral frontal circuits gating human approach-avoidance behavior.

Excessive avoidance and diminished approach behavior are both prominent features of anxiety, trauma and stress related disorders. Despite this, little is known about the neuronal mechanisms supporting gating of human approach-avoidance behavior. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track dorsal anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal (dACC/dmPFC) activation along an approach-avoidance continuum to assess sensitivity to competing appetitive and aversive contingencies and correspondence with behavior change.

Not so bad: avoidance and aversive discounting modulate threat appraisal in anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex.

The dorsal anterior cingulate (adACC) and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) play a central role in the discrimination and appraisal of threatening stimuli. Yet, little is known about what specific features of threatening situations recruit these regions and how avoidance may modulate appraisal and activation through prevention of aversive events. In this investigation, 30 healthy adults underwent functional neuroimaging while completing an avoidance task in which responses to an Avoidable CS+ threat prevented delivery of an aversive stimulus, but not to an Unavoidable CS+ threat.

Neuroimaging the temporal dynamics of human avoidance to sustained threat.

Many forms of human psychopathology are characterized by sustained negative emotional responses to threat and chronic behavioral avoidance, implicating avoidance as a potential transdiagnostic factor. Evidence from both nonhuman neurophysiological and human neuroimaging studies suggests a distributed frontal-limbic-striatal brain network supports avoidance. However, our understanding of the temporal dynamics of the network to sustained threat that prompts sustained avoidance is limited.

Dynamic brain mapping of behavior change: tracking response initiation and inhibition to changes in reinforcement rate.

Adaptive behavior change is supported by executive control processes distributed throughout a prefrontal-striatal-parietal network. Yet, the temporal dynamics of regions in the network have not been characterized. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we tracked changes brain activation while subjects initiated and inhibited responding in accordance with changes in reinforcement rate.

Human avoidance and approach learning: evidence for overlapping neural systems and experiential avoidance modulation of avoidance neurocircuitry.

Adaptive functioning is thought to reflect a balance between approach and avoidance neural systems with imbalances often producing pathological forms of avoidance. Yet little evidence is available in healthy adults demonstrating a balance between approach and avoidance neural systems and modulation in avoidance neurocircuitry by vulnerability factors for avoidance. Consequently, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare changes in brain activation associated with human avoidance and approach learning and modulation of avoidance neurocircuitry by experiential avoidance.

ABA versus TEACCH: the case for defining and validating comprehensive treatment models in autism.

The authors analyzed the results of a social validation survey to determine if autism service providers including special education teachers, parents, and administrators demonstrate a preference for the intervention components of Applied Behavior Analysis or Training and Education of Autistic and other Communication Handicapped Children. They also investigated the comprehensiveness of these treatment models for use in public school programs. The findings indicate no clear preference for either model, but a significantly higher level of social validity for components inherent in both approaches.

The functional analysis of problematic verbal behavior.

This study describes procedures and outcomes in a functional analysis of problem behavior of 2 public school students. For a 13-year-old honors student, bizarre tacts (labeled as psychotic speech by school staff) were maintained by attention. For a 15-year-old with autism, the functional analysis revealed that perseverative mands for toileting were controlled by attention; mands for edible items were controlled by access to any food item; and mands for nonedible items were maintained by access to the specific item manded.