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Stress-induced avoidance in mood disorders

Nature Human Behaviour volume 6, pages 915–918 (2022)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 17 June 2019

arising from J. Aylward et al. Nature Human Behaviour https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0628-0 (2019)

Understanding the interaction between daily-life environmental factors, such as stress, and the inter-individual expression of affective traits may inform the development and maintenance of dysfunctional behavioural patterns and mental illness1,2,3. Aylward et al.4 reported that stress, induced by threat of electric shocks, did not elicit hypothesized interactions between anxiety and punishment-induced behavioural adaptations. Here we re-analyse the original dataset in a manner directly guided by the original hypotheses which, in combination with careful behavioural modelling, reveals increased punishment avoidance for anxious individuals during stress. By re-analysing valuable data that were already collected, published and made freely available, our study supports the original hypothesis, and thereby encourages future research on the interactions between stress and vulnerability factors for developing mental illness, a research theme particularly timely given reports of global increases in stress and mental health decline5,6,7.

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Fig. 1: Task description and main results.

Data availability

All data used in this analysis were obtained via the online repository linked to in the original article: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/UB6J7.

Code availability

All code is available from the authors upon reasonable request.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Brain Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Kristoffer C. Aberg & Rony Paz

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  1. Kristoffer C. Aberg
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  2. Rony Paz
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Contributions

K.C.A. and R.P. analysed the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kristoffer C. Aberg.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Monique Ernst, Vanessa Brown and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Aberg, K.C., Paz, R. Stress-induced avoidance in mood disorders. Nat Hum Behav 6, 915–918 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01405-8

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