Extinction training during reconsolidation has been shown to persistently diminish conditioned fear responses across species. We investigated in humans if older fear memories can benefit similarly. Using a Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm we compared standard extinction and extinction after memory reactivation 1 d or 7 d following acquisition. Participants who underwent extinction during reconsolidation showed no evidence of fear recovery, whereas fear responses returned in participants who underwent standard extinction. We observed this effect in young and old fear memories. Extending the beneficial use of reconsolidation to older fear memories in humans is promising for therapeutic applications.[Supplemental material is available for this article.]Learning to predict threat from cues in the environment is adaptive. In order to remain adaptive, however, the memory of the association between a neutral cue and a threat cue, as well as the elicited fear response or defensive behavior, needs to be flexibly modified as situations change. The standard approach to modify fear is extinction or exposure training in which a new, safe association is learned, leading to a gradually diminished fear expression. With extinction, however, fear might return because the original fear memory is not significantly altered and must be inhibited to express the new extinction memory (Bouton 2004). It has been suggested that the inability to consistently inhibit fear memories following extinction or exposure may be a factor in the maladaptive expression of fear in anxiety, trauma, or stress-related disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Rauch et al. 2006). The potentially temporary nature of extinction or exposure training led to the search for strategies to more persistently alter fear memories, which renewed interest in the post-retrieval memory process of reconsolidation. Reconsolidation is a restabilization process triggered by the retrieval of the original memory (Duvarci and Nader 2004). Interventions that interfere with reconsolidation can persistently alter the expression of fear memories (Nader et al. 2000;Schiller et al. 2010). However, to derive a viable therapeutic technique based on disrupting reconsolidation, it is critical that both recently formed and older fear memories can be altered. Since memories of trauma are often formed long before treatment opportunities are available, it is important to characterize the effectiveness of reconsolidation for older memories. To date, there is little evidence in humans demonstrating the efficacy of targeting reconsolidation to diminish the expression of fear memories .1 d old. The goal of the present study was to start to bridge this gap by targeting reconsolidation in 7-d-old fear memories.Two primary techniques have been used to target the reconsolidation of fear memories: pharmacological and behavioral. These studies have examined fear memories using Pavlovian fear conditioning, in which an aversive unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is paired with a neutral co...
Resting state vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) is related to difficulties in emotion regulation (ER). The prefrontal cortex (PFC) provides inhibitory control over the amygdala during ER. Previous studies linked vmHRV with activity in the ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) during implicit ER. To date no study examined the relation between vmHRV and brain activity during explicit ER. vmHRV was measured during a 7 min baseline at T1 2–5 days preceding T2. At T2 n = 24 participants (50% female, Mage = 24.6 years) viewed neutral or emotional pictures of pleasant or unpleasant valence and were instructed to intensify or to reduce their present emotion using two ER strategies (reappraisal and response modulation) or to passively view the picture. Participants rated the valence of their emotional state from pleasant to unpleasant after ER. Whole-brain fMRI data were collected using a 1.5-T-scanner. We observed an association between resting state vmHRV and brain activation in the PFC and the amygdala during ER of unpleasant emotions. Groups based on vmHRV showed significant differences in the modulation of amygdala activity as a function of ER strategy. In participants with high vmHRV amygdala activity was modulated only when using reappraisal and for low vmHRV participants only when using response modulation. Similar, dorsomedial PFC activity in high vmHRV participants was increased when using reappraisal and in low vmHRV participants when using response modulation to regulate unpleasant emotions. These results suggest that individuals with low vmHRV might have difficulties in recruiting prefrontal brain areas necessary for the modulation of amygdala activity during explicit ER.
The current experiments tested neural and physiological correlates of worry and rumination in comparison to thinking about neutral events. According to the avoidance model-stating that worry is a strategy to reduce intense emotions-physiological and neurobiological activity during worried thinking should not differ from activation during neutral thinking. According to the contrast avoidance model-stating that worry is a strategy to reduce abrupt shifts of emotions-activity should be increased. To test these competing models, we induced worry and neutral thinking in healthy participants using personal topics. A rumination condition was added to investigate the specificity of changes induced by the mental process. Two experiments were conducted assessing the effects on different response levels: (1) neural activation using fMRI, and (2) physiological response mobilization using startle and autonomic measures. During worry, participants showed a potentiated startle response and BOLD activity indicative of emotional network activation. These data partly support the contrast avoidance model of worry. Both mental processes showed elevated activity in a common network referred to as default network indicating self-referential activity.
Es gehört zu den zentralen menschlichen Fertigkeiten, Emotionen, welche durch externale oder internale Ereignisse ausgelöst werden gemäß der kurz- und langfristigen Handlungsziele zu regulieren. Diese Fertigkeiten werden über neuronale Netzwerke im präfrontalen Kortex vermittelt. Der dorsolaterale und ventromediale präfrontale Kortex ist entscheidend beteiligt, wenn Menschen über Neubewertung der Situation versuchen ihre Emotionen kognitiv zu modulieren. Die neuronalen Netzwerke dieser präfrontalen Kortexareale hemmen dabei die Aktivität der Amygdala und reduzieren somit die Signifikanz des emotionsauslösenden Ereignisses. Emotionsregulation wird daher als Zusammenspiel von emotionsgenerierenden Regionen (z. B. Amygdala, Insel etc.) und regulierenden Kontrollregionen (z. B. dorsolateraler und ventromedialer präfrontaler Kortex) betrachtet.
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