The CogLearn Toolkit for Unity: Validating a virtual reality paradigm for human avoidance learning.

ABSTRACT: Avoidance learning encompasses the acquisition of behaviours that enable individuals to evade or withdraw from potentially harmful stimuli, prior to their occurrence. Maladaptive avoidance is a crucial feature of anxiety and trauma-related disorders. In biological and clinical settings, avoidance behaviours usually involve uninstructed, idiosyncratic and complex motor actions. However, there is a lack of laboratory paradigms that allow investigating how such actions are acquired. To fill this gap, we developed a wireless virtual reality platform to investigate avoidance learning in naturalistic settings, with an uncomfortable sound as unconditioned stimulus (US), a physically plausible avoidance action, and allowing for unconstrained movements. This platform, the CogLearn Toolkit for Unity

SUBMITTER: Rodriguez Lopez M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12041112 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature