How do we adapt to constantly changing environments? In this project we test the impact of autonomic balance on the capacity to adapt to changing environments. With autonomic balance we mean the relative activity in the sympathetic and parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). We use various (reversal) learning tasks in stable and volatile contexts in neurotypicals and in patients with anxiety disorders. In the ERC advanced project HEART2ADAPT we test the hypothesis that sympathetic overdrive in anxiety patients may lead to overadaptation to environmental changes. Such overadaptation might be caused by a misattribution of random changes in the environment and interpreting them as meaningful changes to which one should adapt. We will explore the possibility that excessive avoidance decisions may be due to failure of attributing situational change to noise, interpreting it as threat instead. We will test this in healthy participants using social threat cues, in patients with anxiety disorders, but also in patients with bilateral amygdala calcifications (a collaboration with Cape Town University and Utrecht University). Additionally we will probe the system using ultrasound stimulation of the amygdala and the dorsal ACC
