Approach-Avoidance Decisions Under Threat: The Role of Autonomic Psychophysiological States

Abstract

Acutely challenging or threatening situations frequently require approach-avoidance decisions. Acute threat triggers fast autonomic changes that prepare the body to freeze, fight or flee. However, such autonomic changes may also influence subsequent instrumental approach-avoidance decisions. Since defensive bodily states are often not considered in value-based decision-making models, it remains unclear how they influence the decision-making process. Here, we aim to bridge this gap by discussing the existing literature on the potential role of threat-induced bodily states on decision making and provide a new neurocomputational framework explaining how these effects can facilitate or bias approach-avoid decisions under threat. Theoretical accounts have stated that threat-induced parasympathetic activity is involved in information gathering and decision making. Parasympathetic dominance over sympathetic activity is particularly seen during threat-anticipatory freezing, an evolutionarily conserved response to threat demonstrated across species and characterized by immobility and bradycardia. Although this state of freezing has been linked to altered information processing and action preparation, a full theoretical treatment of the interactions with value-based decision making has not yet been achieved. Our neural framework, which we term the Threat State/Value Integration (TSI) Model, will illustrate how threat-induced bodily states may impact valuation of competing incentives at three stages of the decision-making process, namely at threat evaluation, integration of rewards and threats, and action initiation. Additionally, because altered parasympathetic activity and decision biases have been shown in anxious populations, we will end with discussing how biases in this system can lead to characteristic patterns of avoidance seen in anxiety-related disorders, motivating future pre-clinical and clinical research.

Acute threat enhances perceptual sensitivity without affecting the decision criterion

“…However, there was no evidence for a threat-induced alteration of the prior expectation on current decisions. Our findings are in line with theoretical models 1 – 3 on how freezing state may facilitate accurate approach-avoid decisions by improved perceptual decisions. Together, these findings suggest that under acute threat participants may rely more on bottom-up sensory processing versus prior expectations in perceptual decision-making.…”

“…This is in line with previous studies showing such an association 30 , 36 . This notion is in line with the hypothesis that freezing acts as a brake on the already activated motor system facilitating a fast switch to action by simply releasing the parasympathetic break 1 , 3 .…”

“…Such acutely uncertain threatening situations trigger fast autonomic changes that prepare the body to freeze, fight or flight. Theoretical models have stated that affective states such as freezing may facilitate decision-making under uncertainty for example by enhancing threat processing and detection 1 , 2 and value-based decision-making 3 . Threat-induced affective states may therefore increase bottom-up processing of sensory stimuli and improve perceptual sensitivity under threat 4 – 8 .…”

Fear of being near: Fear supersedes sociability when interacting amid a pandemic

“…Specifically, facing this novel threat should necessitate action preparation that subsequently leads to either approaching or avoiding the interaction. Such preparation could be facilitated by freezing at the initial stage of the decision-making process, extending interaction decision time; conflicted individuals might require additional time to further evaluate rewards and punishments associated with interacting ( Livermore et al, 2021 ; Roelofs, 2017 ). Thus, it might be that differences in social conflict levels persist during the pandemic, with the virus threat eliciting a fundamental fear response that precedes individual reaction tendencies rooted in differences in social dispositions.…”

Consciousness matters: phenomenal experience has functional value

“…2019 ). Such emotional behaviours rely on survival circuits strongly constrained by evolution ( Anderson and Adolphs 2014 ), generating a limited behavioural repertoire, such as freezing, aggression or avoidance ( Livermore et al. 2021 ).…”