PIOF-GA-2013-627743 TESTAAP : The experimental study of threat-avoidance in anxiety patients: behavioral, emotional and neural correlates.

Disabling forms of anxiety are a major problem for many people world-wide and come with high societal and financial costs. Important steps forward are being made within a global network of translational, trans-disciplinary and trans-diagnostic researchers. These pre-clinical research efforts focus on reducing inflated levels of fear, with considerable success. But, clinicians clinical theorists and clinical researchers argue more and more that engaging in strategies to avoid imagined threats is more disabling than merely fearing those threats. Targeting avoidance may be more important than targeting fear. This research project uses the translational, trans-disciplinary and trans-diagnostic approach to enter the experimental study of (deviant) avoidance behaviors. For that purpose, the project will scan activity patterns in the brain of anxiety patients while they are participating in an experimental task to model threat-avoidance behaviors (to be conducted at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA). In the return phase of the project at KU Leuven, the project will focus on the (over)generalization of avoidance behaviors.

Keywords:neural correlates, emotional, behavioral, anxiety patients, threat-avoidance

Disciplines:Biological and physiological psychology, General psychology, Other psychology and cognitive sciences