Adaptive behavior can produce maladaptive anxiety due to individual differences in experience.

ABSTRACT: Normal anxiety is considered an adaptive response to the possible presence of danger, but is susceptible to dysregulation. Anxiety disorders are prevalent at high frequency in contemporary human societies, yet impose substantial disability upon their sufferers. This raises a puzzle: why has evolution left us vulnerable to anxiety disorders? We develop a signal detection model in which individuals must learn how to calibrate their anxiety responses: they need to learn which cues indicate danger in the environment. We derive the optimal strategy for doing so, and find that individuals face an inevitable exploration-exploitation tradeoff between obtaining a better estimate of the level of risk on one hand, and maximizing current payoffs on the other. Because of this tradeoff, a subset of the

SUBMITTER: Meacham F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5490257 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature