Defensive system activation promotes heightened perception of threat signals, and
excessive attention to threat signals has been discussed as a contributory factor in the …

Background Theories of aberrant attentional processing in social anxiety, and anxiety
disorders more broadly, have postulated an initial hypervigilance or facilitation to clinically …

Anxiety states are characterized by attentional biases to threat and increased early brain
responses to potentially threat signaling stimuli. How such stimuli are processed further …

Efficient detection and reaction to negative signals in the environment is essential for
survival. In social situations, these signals are often ambiguous and can imply different …

Threat-related information attracts attention and disrupts ongoing behavior, and particularly
so for more anxious individuals. Yet, it is unknown how and to what extent threat-related …

Debate continues as to the automaticity of the amygdala's response to threat. Accounts
taking a strong automaticity line suggest that the amygdala's response to threat is both …

Acquired fear responses often generalize from conditioned stimuli (CS) towards perceptually
similar, but harmless generalization stimuli (GS). Knowledge on similarities between CS and …

An attentional bias to threat has been causally related to anxiety. Recent research has
linked nonconscious attentional bias to threat with variability in the integrity of the amygdala …

In this article, we consider the extent to which variations in the neural activation associated
with fear-related stimuli are obligatory or optional. More specifically, we investigated …

Background Previous studies of patients with social anxiety have demonstrated abnormal
early processing of facial stimuli in social contexts. In other words, patients with social …