Adaptation to potential threat~The evolution, neurobiology, and psychopathology of the security motivation system

Summary: Eminent Canadian psychologists are coming up with an argument to manage risks of uncertain and improbable situations. Human beings have developed a special motivational system, which psychologists call the security motivation system.

Source: Neuroscience Behavioural Review.

How adaptation has affected the animal kingdom in general and human beings in specific has always been an area of interest for the scientific community. Especially, every time the human civilization has faced the threat of existence due to certain biological or evolutionary vulnerabilities, this has turned out to be something of immense importance.

The risk of uncertain, improbable but grave potential dangers are found to pose unique adaptive challenges to human civilization. Eminent Canadian psychologists are coming up with the argument that to manage such risks. Human beings have developed a special motivational system, which the psychologists call the security motivation system.

Prior research work across a wide range of species have come up to indicate that this system is designed in a way that it successfully detects subtle (or soft) indicators of potential threat. They are then evolved to to probe the environment for further information about the possible dangers from the environment. Then this system is motivated in the engagement of the species in precautionary behaviors. This also acts as an important function in the termination of security motivation.

This specific article acts in the direction of advancement of a neurobiological-circuit model of the security motivation system. This system consists of a cascade of cortico-striato-pallido-thalamo-cortical loops.

The research explores the finer points of the larger physiological network involved, which includes control of the parasympathetic nervous system. Finally, the paper comes up with the idea that some kinds of psychopathology might stem from the dysfunction of the security motivation system. That is the main focus of the description.