Behavioral and neural mechanisms of latent inhibition

Abstract

Fear is an adaptive emotion that serves to protect an organism against potential dangers. It is often studied using classical conditioning paradigms where a conditioned stimulus is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus to induce a threat response. Less commonly studied is a phenomenon that is related to this form of conditioning, known as latent inhibition. Latent inhibition (LI) is a paradigm in which a neutral cue is repeatedly presented in the absence of any aversive associations. Subsequent pairing of this pre-exposed cue with an aversive stimulus typically leads to reduced expression of a conditioned fear/threat response. In this article, we review some of the theoretical basis for LI and its behavioral and neural mechanisms. We compare and contrast LI and fear/threat extinction—a process in which a previously conditioned cue is repeatedly presented in the absence of aversive outcomes. We end with highlighting the potential clinical utility of LI. Particularly, we focus on how LI application could be useful for enhancing resilience, especially for individuals who are more prone to continuous exposure to trauma and stressful environments, such as healthcare workers and first responders. The knowledge to be gained from advancing our understanding of neural mechanisms in latent inhibition could be applicable across psychiatric disorders characterized by exaggerated fear responses and impaired emotion regulation.

Neural Representation of Valenced and Generic Probability and Uncertainty

“…Thus, the consistent occurrence of a neutral outcome (liquid) failed to substantially increase attention to our task. This finding potentially sheds new light on latent inhibition ( Lubow and Moore, 1959 ; Rodríguez et al, 2019 ; Miller et al, 2022 ), i.e., the well-documented finding that cues consistently followed by no outcome elicit less attention and subsequently enter associations less easily. Our findings suggest the testable hypothesis that it is not just the absence of an outcome but the absence of an outcome with motivational relevance that produces the latent inhibition effect.…”

Conscious knowledge of CS-UCS contingency information affects extinction retrieval of conditioned disgust responses: Findings from an online de novo disgust conditioning task

“…This could lead to additional consolidation and strengthening of the CS+-UCS memory trace, which consequently would increase the resistance to extinction. The instruction might also slow down extinction learning, block forgetting during the delay between extinction and retrieval trials or counteract the effects of post-acquisition latent extinction learning ( Miller et al, 2022 ). The latter refers to the possibility that the conditioned response further weakens in-between extinction trials due to the replay of events in the brain structures that are part of the brain defence system ( Chen et al, 2009 ; Fanselow, 1994 ; Kaefer et al, 2022 ).…”