Circuit dynamics of approach-avoidance conflict in humans.

ABSTRACT: Debilitating anxiety is pervasive in the modern world. Choices to approach or avoid are common in everyday life and excessive avoidance is a cardinal feature of anxiety disorders. Here, we used intracranial EEG to define a distributed prefrontal-limbic circuit supporting approach and avoidance. Presurgical epilepsy patients (n=20) performed a continuous-choice, approach-avoidance conflict decision-making task inspired by the arcade game Pac-Man, where patients trade-off harvesting rewards against potential losses from attack by the ghost. As patients approached increasing rewards and threats, we found evidence of a limbic circuit mediated by increased theta power in the hippocampus, amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), that drops rapidly during avoidanc

SUBMITTER: Staveland BR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11722433 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature