The Pleasure of Absent Danger: Vta and Striatal Responses to the Unexpected Omission of Threat Are Related to Self-Reported Relief

We examined the role of threat expectations on subjective and neural threat omission processing using fMRI. Subjective relief and BOLD responses were measured following threat omissions of differing probability and intensity. We found omission-related BOLD activations within the reward pathway, that were furthermore related to the pleasurable feeling of relief.