Take our Generalized Anxiety Disorder Test

Find a therapist to overcome anxiety

Safety signal learning refers to the brain’s ability to recognize cues that predict the absence of threat.

Safety learning involves the active recognition of security, rather than only the reduction of fear.

A consistent and attuned therapist can become part of a client’s safety-learning environment.

Anxiety is often described as apprehension, worries, a sense of impending doom, or fear in the absence of real danger. For many people, however, that definition may feel incomplete. Sometimes it is the quiet sense that the body cannot settle. The room is calm, the conversation is over, the email has been sent, and yet something inside continues to scan the environment.

This raises an important clinical question: What if anxiety is not only about learning fear but also about difficulty learning safety?

Safety Signal Learning

A growing area of research called safety signal learning offers a useful way to think about this. Safety signal learning refers to the brain’s ability to recognize cues that predict the absence of threat. The body learns that when a particular cue is present, danger is unlikely to follow. This process is related to, but distinct from, extinction learning, where fear gradually decreases after repeated experiences of non-threat. Safety learning involves the active recognition of security, rather than only the reduction of fear.

In a recent study of healthy adults, Odriozola and colleagues examined how the brain responds to learned safety cues and how this process varies with trait anxiety. Participants completed a conditioning task while........

© Psychology Today