Characterizing Neurobiological and Cognitive-Emotional Adaptation in Anxiety Disorders： Insights from Fear Extinction Learning and Facial Affective Recognition
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Adaptation is essential for survival, enabling organisms to respond appropriately to dynamic environmental challenges. In anxiety disorders (ADs), maladaptive responses—such as persistent fear and attentional biases—impede this process and contribute to clinical dysfunction. This thesis investigates adaptation from two complementary perspectives.
Study 1 explores impaired neural adaptation during fear extinction learning in a transdiagnostic AD sample using fMRI, identifying neural signatures of deficient emotional-associative learning.
Study 2 examines post-treatment cognitive-emotional adaptation in panic disorder, focusing on recognition accuracy of subliminal happy facial expressions following exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
Together, the studies highlight both pre-treatment neural rigidity and post-treatment emotional recalibration as key facets of adaptation. Findings advance understanding of anxiety pathology and support the development of personalized, mechanism-based interventions aligned with frameworks like RDoC.
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This item has been published with the following license: In Copyright