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Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology 1994In the present article previously published and novel data are reviewed concerning the organization of avoidance behavior of snails of the genus Helix. Musculature... (Review)
Review
In the present article previously published and novel data are reviewed concerning the organization of avoidance behavior of snails of the genus Helix. Musculature participating in the behavior is described, and neural networks controlling the muscles are considered.
Topics: Animals; Avoidance Learning; Behavior, Animal; Helix, Snails; Nervous System; Nervous System Physiological Phenomena
PubMed: 8208384
DOI: 10.1007/BF02355654 -
The Journal of Neuroscience : the... Jun 2021The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) has been linked to avoidance and decision-making under conflict, key neural computations altered in anxiety disorders. However,...
The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) has been linked to avoidance and decision-making under conflict, key neural computations altered in anxiety disorders. However, the heterogeneity of prefrontal projections has obscured identification of specific top-down projections involved. While the dmPFC-amygdala circuit has long been implicated in controlling reflexive fear responses, recent work suggests that dmPFC-dorsomedial striatum (DMS) projections may be more important for regulating avoidance. Using fiber photometry recordings in both male and female mice during the elevated zero maze task, we show heightened neural activity in frontostriatal but not frontoamygdalar projection neurons during exploration of the anxiogenic open arms. Additionally, using optogenetics, we demonstrate that this frontostriatal projection preferentially excites postsynaptic D receptor-expressing neurons in the DMS and causally controls innate avoidance behavior. These results support a model for prefrontal control of defensive behavior in which the dmPFC-amygdala projection controls reflexive fear behavior and the dmPFC-striatum projection controls anxious avoidance behavior. The medial prefrontal cortex has been extensively linked to several behavioral symptom domains related to anxiety disorders, with much of the work centered around reflexive fear responses. Comparatively little is known at the mechanistic level about anxious avoidance behavior, a core feature across anxiety disorders. Recent work has suggested that the striatum may be an important hub for regulating avoidance behaviors. Our work uses optical circuit dissection techniques to identify a specific corticostriatal circuit involved in encoding and controlling avoidance behavior. Identifying neural circuits for avoidance will enable the development of more targeted symptom-specific treatments for anxiety disorders.
Topics: Animals; Avoidance Learning; Behavior, Animal; Corpus Striatum; Female; Instinct; Male; Mice; Mice, Inbred C57BL; Neural Pathways; Prefrontal Cortex
PubMed: 34001628
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2581-20.2021 -
Current Topics in Behavioral... 2017The ability to control our automatic action tendencies is crucial for adequate social interactions. Emotional events trigger automatic approach and avoidance tendencies.... (Review)
Review
The ability to control our automatic action tendencies is crucial for adequate social interactions. Emotional events trigger automatic approach and avoidance tendencies. Although these actions may be generally adaptive, the capacity to override these emotional reactions may be key to flexible behavior during social interaction. The present chapter provides a review of the neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying this ability and their relation to social psychopathologies. Aberrant social behavior, such as observed in social anxiety or psychopathy, is marked by abnormalities in approach-avoidance tendencies and the ability to control them. Key neural regions involved in the regulation of approach-avoidance behavior are the amygdala, widely implicated in automatic emotional processing, and the anterior prefrontal cortex, which exerts control over the amygdala. Hormones, especially testosterone and cortisol, have been shown to affect approach-avoidance behavior and the associated neural mechanisms. The present chapter also discusses ways to directly influence social approach and avoidance behavior and will end with a research agenda to further advance this important research field. Control over approach-avoidance tendencies may serve as an exemplar of emotional action regulation and might have a great value in understanding the underlying mechanisms of the development of affective disorders.
Topics: Animals; Antisocial Personality Disorder; Avoidance Learning; Brain; Emotions; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Social Behavior
PubMed: 27356521
DOI: 10.1007/7854_2016_446 -
Journal of Visualized Experiments : JoVE Oct 2020Avoidance behavior is a key contributor to the transition from acute pain to chronic pain disability. Yet, there has been a lack of ecologically valid paradigms to...
Avoidance behavior is a key contributor to the transition from acute pain to chronic pain disability. Yet, there has been a lack of ecologically valid paradigms to experimentally investigate pain-related avoidance. To fill this gap, we developed a paradigm (the robotic arm-reaching paradigm) to investigate the mechanisms underlying the development of pain-related avoidance behavior. Existing avoidance paradigms (mostly in the context of anxiety research) have often operationalized avoidance as an experimenter-instructed, low-cost response, superimposed on stimuli associated with threat during a Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure. In contrast, the current method offers increased ecological validity in terms of instrumental learning (acquisition) of avoidance, and by adding a cost to the avoidance response. In the paradigm, participants perform arm-reaching movements from a starting point to a target using a robotic arm, and freely choose between three different movement trajectories to do so. The movement trajectories differ in probability of being paired with a painful electrocutaneous stimulus, and in required effort in terms of deviation and resistance. Specifically, the painful stimulus can be (partly) avoided at the cost of performing movements requiring increased effort. Avoidance behavior is operationalized as the maximal deviation from the shortest trajectory on each trial. In addition to explaining how the new paradigm can help understand the acquisition of avoidance, we describe adaptations of the robotic arm-reaching paradigm for (1) examining the spread of avoidance to other stimuli (generalization), (2) modeling clinical treatment in the lab (extinction of avoidance using response prevention), as well as (3) modeling relapse, and return of avoidance following extinction (spontaneous recovery). Given the increased ecological validity, and numerous possibilities for extensions and/or adaptations, the robotic arm-reaching paradigm offers a promising tool to facilitate the investigation of avoidance behavior and to further our understanding of its underlying processes.
Topics: Arm; Avoidance Learning; Chronic Pain; Conditioning, Classical; Female; Humans; Male; Robotics
PubMed: 33074255
DOI: 10.3791/61717 -
Scientific Reports Jun 2022Active avoidance behavior, in which an animal performs an action to avoid a stressor, is crucial for survival and may provide insight into avoidance behaviors seen in...
Active avoidance behavior, in which an animal performs an action to avoid a stressor, is crucial for survival and may provide insight into avoidance behaviors seen in anxiety disorders. Active avoidance requires the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), which is thought to regulate avoidance via downstream projections to the striatum and amygdala. However, the endogenous activity of dmPFC projections during active avoidance learning has never been recorded. Here we utilized fiber photometry to record from the dmPFC and its axonal projections to the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) and the basolateral amygdala (BLA) during active avoidance learning in both male and female mice. We examined neural activity during conditioned stimulus (CS) presentations and during clinically relevant behaviors such as active avoidance or cued freezing. Both prefrontal projections showed learning-related increases in activity during CS onset throughout active avoidance training. The dmPFC as a whole showed increased and decreased patterns of activity during avoidance and cued freezing, respectively. Finally, dmPFC-DMS and dmPFC-BLA projections show divergent encoding of active avoidance behavior, with the dmPFC-DMS projection showing increased activity and the dmPFC-BLA projection showing decreased activity during active avoidance. Our results demonstrate task-relevant encoding of active avoidance in projection-specific dmPFC subpopulations that play distinct but complementary roles in active avoidance learning.
Topics: Amygdala; Animals; Avoidance Learning; Basolateral Nuclear Complex; Conditioning, Operant; Female; Male; Mice; Prefrontal Cortex
PubMed: 35750718
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-14930-3 -
Behaviour Research and Therapy Sep 2017Pathological avoidance of benign stimuli is a hallmark of anxiety and related disorders, and exposure-based treatments have often encouraged the removal of avoidance, or... (Review)
Review
Pathological avoidance of benign stimuli is a hallmark of anxiety and related disorders, and exposure-based treatments have often encouraged the removal of avoidance, or safety behaviors, due to their negative effects on extinction learning. Unfortunately, empirical evidence suggests that avoidance behaviors can persist following treatment, and the mere availability of avoidance behavior can be sufficient to renew fear following successful extinction learning. The present paper critically examines the function of avoidance behavior through the lens of modern learning theory, and speculates on novel behavioral and pharmacological strategies for targeting avoidance as an adjunct to current evidence-based treatments.
Topics: Animals; Anti-Anxiety Agents; Anxiety Disorders; Avoidance Learning; Combined Modality Therapy; Humans; Implosive Therapy; Learning; Psychological Theory
PubMed: 28477845
DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2017.04.009 -
Neuron Nov 2019Long-range synchronization of neural oscillations correlates with distinct behaviors, yet its causal role remains unproven. In mice, tests of avoidance behavior evoke...
Long-range synchronization of neural oscillations correlates with distinct behaviors, yet its causal role remains unproven. In mice, tests of avoidance behavior evoke increases in theta-frequency (∼8 Hz) oscillatory synchrony between the ventral hippocampus (vHPC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). To test the causal role of this synchrony, we dynamically modulated vHPC-mPFC terminal activity using optogenetic stimulation. Oscillatory stimulation at 8 Hz maximally increased avoidance behavior compared to 2, 4, and 20 Hz. Moreover, avoidance behavior was selectively increased when 8-Hz stimulation was delivered in an oscillatory, but not pulsatile, manner. Furthermore, 8-Hz oscillatory stimulation enhanced vHPC-mPFC neurotransmission and entrained neural activity in the vHPC-mPFC network, resulting in increased synchrony between vHPC theta activity and mPFC spiking. These data suggest a privileged role for vHPC-mPFC theta-frequency communication in generating avoidance behavior and provide direct evidence that synchronized oscillations play a role in facilitating neural transmission and behavior.
Topics: Animals; Avoidance Learning; Electrophysiological Phenomena; Hippocampus; Maze Learning; Mice; Optogenetics; Prefrontal Cortex; Synaptic Transmission; Theta Rhythm
PubMed: 31521441
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.08.006 -
Journal of Neurogenetics 2020secretes a complex cocktail of small chemicals collectively called ascaroside pheromones which serves as a chemical language for intra-species communication. Subsets of... (Comparative Study)
Comparative Study
secretes a complex cocktail of small chemicals collectively called ascaroside pheromones which serves as a chemical language for intra-species communication. Subsets of ascarosides have been shown to mediate a broad spectrum of behavior and development, such as gender-specific attraction, repulsion, aggregation, olfactory plasticity, and dauer formation. Recent studies show that specific components of ascarosides elicit a rapid avoidance response that allows animals to avoid predators and escape from unfavorable conditions. Moreover, this avoidance behavior is modulated by external conditions, internal states, and previous experience, indicating that pheromone avoidance behavior is highly plastic. In this review, we describe molecular and circuit mechanisms underlying plasticity in pheromone avoidance behavior which pave a way to better understanding circuit mechanisms underlying behavioral plasticity in higher animals, including humans.
Topics: Adaptation, Physiological; Animals; Avoidance Learning; Caenorhabditis elegans; Connectome; Feeding Behavior; Forecasting; Glycolipids; Lipids; Nematoda; Neural Pathways; Pheromones; Species Specificity
PubMed: 32811242
DOI: 10.1080/01677063.2020.1802723 -
Psychological Reports Apr 2020
Topics: Adult; Avoidance Learning; Conditioning, Classical; Extinction, Psychological; Fear; Female; Humans; Male; Memory Consolidation; Mental Recall; Young Adult
PubMed: 30439304
DOI: 10.1177/0033294118811116 -
PloS One 2020Most agricultural soils are expected to be contaminated with agricultural chemicals. As the exposure to pesticides can have adverse effects on non-target organisms,...
Most agricultural soils are expected to be contaminated with agricultural chemicals. As the exposure to pesticides can have adverse effects on non-target organisms, avoiding contaminated areas would be advantageous on an individual level, but could lead to a chemical landscape fragmentation with disadvantages on the metapopulation level. We investigated the avoidance behavior of juvenile common toads (Bufo bufo) in response to seven pesticide formulations commonly used in German vineyards. We used test arenas filled with silica sand and oversprayed half of each with different pesticide formulations. We placed a toad in the middle of an arena, filmed its behavior over 24 hours, calculated the proportion of time a toad spent on the contaminated side and compared it to a random side choice. We found evidence for the avoidance of the folpet formulation Folpan® 500 SC, the metrafenone formulation Vivando® and the glyphosate formulation Taifun® forte at maximum recommended field rates for vine and a trend for avoidance of Wettable Sulphur Stulln (sulphur). No avoidance was observed when testing Folpan® 80 WDG (folpet), Funguran® progress (copper hydroxide), SpinTorTM (spinosad), or 10% of the maximum field rate of any formulation tested. In the choice-tests in which we observed an avoidance, toads also showed higher activity on the contaminated side of the arena. As video analysis with tracking software is not always feasible, we further tested the effect of reducing the sampling interval for manual data analyses. We showed that one data point every 15 or 60 minutes results in a risk of overlooking a weak avoidance behavior, but still allows to verify the absence/presence of an avoidance for six out of seven formulations. Our findings are important for an upcoming pesticide risk assessment for amphibians and could be a template for future standardized tests.
Topics: Animals; Avoidance Learning; Bufo bufo; Pesticides; Water Pollutants, Chemical
PubMed: 33253276
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242720