Commonalities and differences in the neural substrates of threat predictability in panic disorder and specific phobia.

Different degrees of threat predictability are thought to induce either phasic fear or sustained anxiety. Maladaptive, sustained anxious apprehension is thought to result in overgeneralization of anxiety and thereby to contribute to the development of anxiety disorders. Therefore, differences in threat predictability have been associated with pathological states of anxiety with specific phobia (SP) representing phasic fear as heightened response to predictable threat, while panic disorder (PD) is characterized by sustained anxiety (unpredictable threat) and, as a consequence, overgeneralization of fear.

Healthy individuals maintain adaptive stimulus evaluation under predictable and unpredictable threat.

The anxiety inducing paradigms such as the threat-of-shock paradigm have provided ample data on the emotional processing of predictable and unpredictable threat, but little is known about the processing of aversive, threat-irrelevant stimuli in these paradigms. We investigated how the predictability of threat influences the neural visual processing of threat-irrelevant fearful and neutral faces. Thirty-two healthy individuals participated in an NPU-threat test, consisting of a safe or neutral condition (N) and a predictable (P) as well as an unpredictable (U) threat condition, using audio-visual threat stimuli.

Prepare for scare-Impact of threat predictability on affective visual processing in spider phobia.

The visual processing of emotional faces is influenced by individual's level of stress and anxiety. Valence unspecific affective processing is expected to be influenced by predictability of threat. Using a design of phasic fear (predictable threat), sustained anxiety (unpredictable threat) and safety (no threat), we investigated the magnetoencephalographic correlates and temporal dynamics of emotional face processing in a sample of phobic patients.