Extinction of instrumental avoidance

There has been a recent surge of interest in avoidance behavior and potential ways to minimize it, given its critical role in psychiatric conditions such as anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In this review, we summarize recent work investigating the extinction of avoidance behavior in humans and rodents. We focus on tasks, the role of inhibitory learning (the avoidance response or safety signals) recovery from extinction, and individual differences. We argue that more research is needed to understand how inhibition interacts with extinction learning, the circumstances under which extinction of avoidance recovers, because understanding these will enable researchers to design better treatments focused on exposure-based therapies. We propose that this should be one of the main goals for successful treatment, and outline several hitherto unexplored questions.