The Unpredictive Brain Under Threat: A Neurocomputational Account of Anxious Hypervigilance

Abstract

Background Anxious hypervigilance is marked by sensitized sensory-perceptual processes and attentional biases to potential danger cues in the environment. How this is realized at the neurocomputational level is unknown but could clarify the brain mechanisms disrupted in psychiatric conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder. Predictive coding, instantiated by dynamic causal models, provides a promising framework to ground these state-related changes in the dynamic interactions of reciprocally connected brain areas. Methods Anxiety states were elicited in healthy participants (n = 19) by exposure to the threat of unpredictable, aversive shocks while undergoing magnetoencephalography. An..