Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders and are often chronic and
disabling. Although exposure-based treatments are effective, a substantial number of …

Fear motivates different types of defensive behaviors. These behaviors are, however, not
mere byproducts of fear. In this review, we highlight a bi-directional relationship between …

It is a defining feature of anxiety disorders that fear is elicited by a circumscribed class of
stimuli rather than by only one specific exemplar of that class. Therefore, fear generalization …

Generalization of Pavlovian fear to safe stimuli resembling conditioned-danger cues (CS+)
is a widely accepted conditioning correlate of clinical anxiety. Though much of the …

Avoidance is generally adaptive, yet excessive rates of avoidance can become maladaptive
and lead to functional impairment and psychopathology. Laboratory-based treatment …

The learning principles that guide the acquisition and extinction of avoidance are not fully
understood. We developed a novel paradigm to study the temporal dynamics of relief, a …

Across the human life span, fear is often acquired indirectly by observation of the emotional
expressions of others. The observational fear conditioning protocol was previously …

Avoiding stimuli that were previously associated with threat is essential for adaptive
functioning, but excessive avoidance that persists in the absence of threat can turn …

Safety behaviors are often maladaptive in clinical anxiety as they typically persist without
realistic threat and cause various impairments. In the laboratory, safety behaviors are …

Potential threat can prime defensive responding and avoidance behavior, which may result
in the loss of rewards. When aversive consequences do not occur, avoidance should, thus …