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Modeling Avoidance in Mood and Anxiety Disorders Using Reinforcement Learning
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Serious and debilitating symptoms of anxiety are the most common mental health problem worldwide, accounting for around 5% of all adult years lived with disability in the developed world. Avoidance behavior-avoiding social situations for fear of embarrassment, for instance-is a core feature of such anxiety. However, as for many other psychiatric symptoms the biological mechanisms underlying avoidance remain unclear. METHODS: Reinforcement learning models provide formal and testable characterizations of the mechanisms of decision making; here, we examine avoidance in these terms. A total of 101 healthy participants and individuals with mood and anxiety disorders completed an approach-avoidance go/no-go task under stress induced by threat of unpredictable shock. RESULTS: We show an increased reliance in the mood and anxiety group on a parameter of our reinforcement learning model that characterizes a prepotent (pavlovian) bias to withhold responding in the face of negative outcomes. This was particularly the case when the mood and anxiety group was under stress. CONCLUSIONS: This formal description of avoidance within the reinforcement learning framework provides a new means of linking clinical symptoms with biophysically plausible models of neural circuitry and, as such, takes us closer to a mechanistic understanding of mood and anxiety disorders.
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“Aversion models in rodents are perhaps the closest pre-clinical approximation to avoidance behaviors [56], although limitations regarding clinical validity need to be kept in mind when interpreting results.”
From Baseline Pro-Inflammatory Cytokine Levels Moderate Psychological Inflexibility in Behavioral Treatment for Chronic Pain (2022) · cites this paper as [56]
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“For example, Mkrtchian et al [18] recently demonstrated avoidance as a part of reinforcement learning pathways in individuals with anxiety disorders.”
From Clinical Efficacy and Psychological Mechanisms of an App-Based Digital Therapeutic for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Randomized Controlled Trial (2021) · cites this paper as [18]
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“, comparable behavioral responses can be elicited across human and animal models (5)] threat-ofshock procedure to induce stress (6,7); 2) a cognitive task that has been shown to reliably index avoidance behavior in healthy individuals (1); and 3) a computationally precise method of defining of avoidance.”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Mkrtchian, A., Aylward, J., Dayan, P., Roiser, J. P., & Robinson, O. J.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Robinson, Oliver J.
- Venue
- Biological Psychiatry
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-10
- Volume
- 82
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 532-539
- ISSN
- 0006-3223 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5598542
- OpenAlex
- W2587263457
- Cited by
- 151
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 4
- FWCI
- 14.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Biological Psychiatry (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Medical Research Council (MR/K024280/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Keywords
- avoidance behavior, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, reinforcement learning models, go/no-go task, stress, Pavlovian bias, neural circuits
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Anxiety, Avoidance Learning, Bayes Theorem, Decision Making, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Models, Psychological, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Reinforcement, Psychology, Mood Disorders, Young Adult
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