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Commentary| Volume 87, ISSUE 10, P870-871, May 15, 2020

Aversive Stimulus Pairings Are an Unnecessary and Insufficient Cause of Pathological Anxiety

  • Bram Vervliet
    Correspondence
    Address correspondence to Bram Vervliet, Ph.D., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Psychology and Educational Sciences, Tiensestraat 102, Leuven 3000, Belgium.
    Affiliations
    Laboratory of Biological Psychology, Department of Brain and Cognition, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Leuven Brain Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
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  • Yannick Boddez
    Affiliations
    Center for the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Department of Experimental, Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
    Search for articles by this author
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      Linked Article

      • Anticipatory Threat Responding: Associations With Anxiety, Development, and Brain Structure
        Biological PsychiatryVol. 87Issue 10
        • Preview
          While translational theories link neurodevelopmental changes in threat learning to pathological anxiety, findings from studies in patients inconsistently support these theories. This inconsistency may reflect difficulties in studying large patient samples with wide age ranges using consistent methods. A dearth of imaging data in patients further limits translational advances. We address these gaps through a psychophysiology and structural brain imaging study in a large sample of patients across the lifespan.
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