Description du projet
Explorer les mécanismes de défense de l’homme
Lorsqu’ils sont menacés, les humains effectuent instantanément un grand nombre d’actions défensives. Les troubles anxieux impliquant certains de ces comportements, il est important de comprendre les mécanismes de sélection d’une action en situation de menace. Les concepts existants du comportement de défense de l’homme résultent de la recherche sur les rongeurs et se concentrent sur un petit nombre de tendances d’action importantes et inter-espèces. Étant donné que cela n’explique pas la complexité des mécanismes fondamentaux de sélection de l’action, le projet ActionContraThreat, financé par l’UE, tentera de comprendre ces mécanismes psychologiques et d’expliquer leur mise en œuvre neuronale. Le projet s’appuie sur une approche cognitive calculatoire pour spécifier systématiquement l’espace des actions menacées, explorer les mécanismes psychologiques qui conditionnent la sélection des actions et les décrire à l’aide d’algorithmes de calcul qui permettent des prédictions quantitatives.
Objectif
Run away, sidestep, duck-and-cover, watch: when under threat, humans immediately choreograph a large repertoire of defensive actions. Understanding action-selection under threat is important for anybody wanting to explain why anxiety disorders imply some of these behaviours in harmless situations. Current concepts of human defensive behaviour are largely derived from rodent research and focus on a small number of broad, cross-species, action tendencies. This is likely to underestimate the complexity of the underlying action-selection mechanisms. This research programme will take decisive steps to understand these psychological mechanisms and elucidate their neural implementation.
To elicit threat-related action in the laboratory, I will use virtual reality computer games with full body motion, and track actions with motion-capture technology. Based on a cognitive-computational framework, I will systematically characterise the space of actions under threat, investigate the psychological mechanisms by which actions are selected in different scenarios, and describe them with computational algorithms that allow quantitative predictions. To independently verify their neural implementation, I will use wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) in freely moving subjects.
This proposal fills a lacuna between defence system concepts based on rodent research, emotion psychology, and clinical accounts of anxiety disorders. By combining a stringent experimental approach with the formalism of cognitive-computational psychology, it furnishes a unique opportunity to understand the mechanisms of action-selection under threat, and how these are distinct from more general-purpose action-selection systems. Beyond its immediate scope, the proposal has a potential to lead to a better understanding of anxiety disorders, and to pave the way towards improved diagnostics and therapies.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitution d’accueil
53113 Bonn
Allemagne