Why do some people stay calm and make flexible choices when faced with danger, while others can only freeze or flee? The answer may lie not just in the brain—but also in the body, our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in particular.
During threat, the sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic nervous systems often act at the same time, but their relative balance has a large impact on how we perceive changes in the environment around us. It also has an impact on how our brains compute the optimal decisions to cope with the threat. Ignoring this balance may be why current science struggles to explain altered decision making under threat in healthy people and particularly in patients with anxiety disorders. The HEART2ADAPT project aims to change that. “By combining new insights from brain science and emotion research, we build a new model to explain how our body’s stress state affects the way we decide to approach or avoid situations.”
HEART2ADAPT is funded by an ERC-Advanced grant (Prof. Karin Roelofs) and will run from June 2026 – June 2030. The project will use cutting-edge tools that monitor body and brain activity in real time, such as heart and posture tracking and advanced brain imaging. Additionally, itwill test causal effects by using pharmacological interventions that impact the parasympathetic system, but also by leveraging recent innovations in neuromodulation: The team will further develop transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) techniques to target deep neural regions that could not be targeted before in a in a specific and noninvasive fashion. The team will also test whether new treatments that change how the body and brain communicate can help people with anxiety disorders make better decisions under pressure.
