Defensive cardiac states sharpen neural value representations during decision making

Abstract

Abstract We regularly face situations that require us to choose between approaching a reward and avoiding a threat. While defensive freezing constitutes an important strategy to help us weigh potential threats and rewards, it remains unclear how freezing states enable threat-reward integration in the brain. Here, we decoded neural threat and reward information during approach-avoidance decision making using high-precision magnetoencephalography (MEG). First, threat-induced cardiac deceleration (indicative of freezing states) was associated with stronger influence of threat and reward on approach-avoidance choices. Second, MEG-decoded threat/reward information predicted approach-avoidance choices several seconds before the actual response. Third, during defensive cardiac states, low-frequency fluctuations in decoded threat/reward signals synchronized more strongly to rhythmic activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, suggesting a sharpening of neural threat/reward-value representations. These findings offer a potential mechanism by which threat-induced freezing states facilitate information integration in the brain, and highlight how freezing may be essential for making adaptive decisions under threat.