Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a heterogeneous disorder that affects individuals exposed to trauma (e.g., combat, interpersonal violence, and natural disasters). It is characterized by hyperarousal, intrusive reminders of the trauma, avoidance of trauma-related cues, and negative cognition and mood. This heterogeneity indicates the presence of multiple neurobiological mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of PTSD. Fear conditioning is a robust, translational experimental paradigm that can be employed to elucidate these mechanisms by allowing for the study of fear-related dimensions of PTSD (e.g., fear extinction, fear inhibition, and generalization of fear) across multiple units of analysis. Fear conditioning experiments have identified varying trajectories of the dimensions described, highlighting exciting new avenues of targeted, focused study. Additionally, fear conditioning studies provide a translational platform to develop novel interventions. The current review highlights the versatility of fear conditioning paradigms, the implications for pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments, the robustness of these paradigms to span an array of neuroscientific measures (e.g., genetic studies), and finally the need to understand the boundary conditions under which these paradigms are effective. Further understanding these paradigms will ultimately allow for optimization of fear conditioning paradigms, a necessary step towards the advancement of PTSD treatment methods.

Adolescent rats are more sensitive to the rewarding and less sensitive to the aversive properties of various drugs of abuse than their adult counterparts. Given a nationwide increase in use of “bath salts,” the present experiment employed the conditioned taste aversion procedure to assess the aversive effects of 3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV; 0, 1.0, 1.8 or 3.2 mg/kg), a common constituent in “bath salts,” in adult and adolescent rats. As similar drugs induce thermoregulatory changes in rats, temperature was recorded following MDPV administration to assess if thermoregulatory changes were related to taste aversion conditioning. Both age groups acquired taste aversions, although these aversions were weaker and developed at a slower rate in the adolescent subjects. Adolescents increased and adults decreased body temperature following MDPV administration with no correlation to aversions. The relative insensitivity of adolescents to the aversive effects of MDPV suggests that MDPV may confer an increased risk in this population.

No abstract