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Published on: September 12, 2014
Safety-relevant experience reshapes neural codes for ambiguous threat in adolescents
Yubing Zhang1, Marta I Garrido1,2, Jacob M Paul1
1School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
|July 16, 2026
Summary
Adolescents can learn to re-interpret threatening visuals, like weapons, as protective signals. Experience reshapes brain activity, updating neural representations for safety and threat, especially during adolescence.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Visually threatening stimuli possess ambiguous meanings, serving as either threats or protective tools.
- Adolescence is a critical period for neural circuit maturation in flexible contextual processing.
- Understanding how experience reshapes neural representations of threatening stimuli during adolescence is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how adolescents' neural responses to visually threatening stimuli change after acquiring safety-relevant meanings.
- To examine the impact of experience on the reorganization of neural representations during adolescence.
- To explore the brain's adaptation to stimuli signaling danger versus protection.
Main Methods:
- Utilized 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure neural responses in 33 adolescents (mean age 14.88 years).
- Participants passively viewed threatening stimuli (animals, weapons) before and after a safety-learning experience.
- Employed multivoxel pattern classification (MVPA) to analyze representational updating.
Main Results:
- Post-experience, protective stimuli (weapons) activated regions for contextual updating and memory retrieval more than threat stimuli (animals).
- Both stimulus types showed heightened pre-experience activation in visual processing and attention regions, indicating vigilance.
- MVPA revealed representational updating for both protection and threat, with convergent patterns for stimuli sharing safety values.
Conclusions:
- Adolescents' neural representations of threatening stimuli can be updated through experience to signal safety.
- The study provides insights into how the adolescent brain adapts to ambiguous visual cues in safety-relevant contexts.
- Findings suggest a framework for understanding the neural mechanisms of learning safety from initially threatening stimuli.
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