Mathematical Characterization of Changes in Fear During Exposure Therapy

Virtual reality in the diagnostic and therapy for mental disorders: A systematic review

“…Moreover, it was found that a short fear activation procedure prior to the exposure had no additional attenuating effect on the return of fear 24 hours later (Shiban, Brütting, Pauli, & Mühlberger, 2015). In a secondary analysis of (Shiban et al, 2013), Portêlo, Shiban, and Maia (2021) found that the individual change in fear during VRET can be mathematically categorized, which may help predict treatment response. Three further case-series studies found potential predictors for short-term treatment response: demographics and pre-treatment clinical scores (Leehr et al, 2021), fear generalization and brain activity during a pre-treatment fear-conditioning paradigm (Roesmann et al, 2022), and changes in self-efficacy and dysfunctional beliefs during treatment (Côté & Bouchard, 2009).…”

ABA, ABC, and AAB renewal effects and individual differences of learning on fear conditioning using social stimuli

“…Recently, computational psychiatry attempted to represent the effect of exposure therapy on each session mathematically, showing that an exponential function is an appropriate model to represent the reduction in fear within a session (Portêlo et al, 2021). Based on the numerous findings indicating that the exposure therapy is an analog of the extinction procedure (e.g., Craske et al, 2008) and the current findings, it is possible that associative models also provide a good mathematical description of the change in fear by exposure sessions.…”

Computational Methods in Psychotherapy: A Scoping Review

“…The identification of the parameters showing change following psychotherapeutic intervention constituted evidence that could be used in experimental medicine studies to identify cognitive domains susceptible to improvement in patients with schizophrenia and thus target them in a more focused manner. Portêlo et al [52] attempted to mathematically characterise changes in fear ratings in patients (30 women with spider phobia) who underwent virtual exposure therapy sessions, and then sought to understand whether the resulting model would help predict treatment outcome. They selected the best model using Bayesian techniques.…”