Targeting the neural mechanisms of human safety learning

Safety learning, reward-prediction error and midbrain-striatal circuitsThreat and safety learning are rival associative learning processes that contribute to the generation and regulation of fear responses, respectively. Whereas the former relates to the processing of threats, the latter relates to their absence, and in doing so, serves to inhibit fear responses. Complementing this role, safety learning has been shown to evoke positive changes in affective state via distinct stress-relieving, reward-like properties. Thus, an emerging view of safety learning is that it encompasses active processes that lead to the regulation of fear and that promote reward seeking behaviours. Despite growing interest in the construct of safety learning, including its clinical translational relevance, much remains to be understood about its underlying neurobiological basis. The goal of this project will be to examine a candidate neural mechanism of safety learning behaviours – the midbrain-striatal ‘reward prediction error’ (RPE). Specifically, this project will target the contribution of omission RPEs (signalling omission of threat) to safety learning processes, including the experience of relief and positive affective change. In the project’s first phase (KUL), novel experimental paradigms will be developed in order to effectively model omission RPEs on safety learning outcomes across autonomic, subjective and behavioural domains. This work will then be translated to a functional neuroimaging investigation (UOM) to characterise the neural circuitry basis of omission RPEs, with an emphasis on high resolution anatomical mapping of midbrain-striatal neural responses.

Keywords:Fear, Avoidance, Safety, Anxiety, Neuroimaging

Disciplines:Behavioural neuroscience, Neuroimaging, Psychopathology, Learning and behaviour, Biological psychology