Threat imminence and estimates of agency dictate proactive and reactive defensive behaviors in active place avoidance
Defensive survival behaviors are shaped by both danger attributes and internal physiological states. Well-characterized defensive responses depend not only on whether danger is potential or perceived, but also on its spatial and or temporal proximity. The relationship between danger imminence and defensive behaviors is referred to as the threat imminence continuum, which provides a conceptual…
The threat imminence continuum is a framework that links ecological and behavioral neuroscience by examining the relationship between danger proximity and defensive behaviors. However, the extent to which the environment can be controlled by an organism has been underexplored in this context. To investigate this, researchers modified the active place avoidance (APA) paradigm, a common method for studying defensive behaviors, and applied it to male and female mice using supervised machine learning.
The APA platform can be used for both active avoidance (when the platform rotates) and deliberative avoidance (when the platform is stationary), making it an ideal tool for studying how environmental control impacts defensive behaviors.
The study compared various danger attributes, including punishment intensity and behavioral agency, across different danger states (absence, presence, and omission of punishment) and learning stages (early and late). Interestingly, the results showed that defensive behaviors were influenced by punishment intensity differently depending on the sex of the mice.
These defensive responses could be categorized as proactive (risk assessment) or reactive (freezing, escape), with their probability of occurrence depending on behavioral agency, spatial proximity to danger, and whether the environment was stable or unstable. Notably, administering a norepinephrine transporter blocker selectively enhanced reactive defensive behaviors without affecting proactive ones.
The findings provide empirical evidence that environmental stability influences the balance between proactive and reactive defensive behaviors, which may have distinct neural underpinnings.
Written by urgent.news from bioRxiv's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
