Vagal control of the heart decreases during increasing imminence of interoceptive threat in patients with panic disorder and agoraphobia
Abstract Theoretically, panic disorder and agoraphobia pathology can be conceptualized as a cascade of dynamically changing defensive responses to threat cues from inside the body.Guided by this trans-diagnostic model we tested the interaction between defensive activation and vagal control as a marker of prefrontal inhibition of subcortical defensi