Differential impact of the first and second wave of a stress response on subsequent fear conditioning in healthy men

Cold pressor test improves fear extinction in healthy men

“…Trial order was pseudorandom, with the restriction of no more than 2 consecutive CS+ or CS− trials. Intertrial intervals ranged from 12 to 26 s (M = 21 s), closely related to our previous study (Antov et al, 2013).…”

“…We have recently shown that inducing the first-wave stress response (without GC-increases), by using the cold pressor test (CPT) prior to fear acquisition, renders fear memory more resistant to immediate extinction in humans (Antov et al, 2013). This raised the question if the CPT had enhanced fear learning manifesting in elevated extinction resistance -in accordance with the model (Schwabe et al, 2012) -or if the CPT impaired extinction learning.…”

“…We applied inclusion and exclusion criteria as described previously (Antov et al, 2013). Assignment to the CPT or control group was random with the restriction that groups were matched on age and body mass index as close as possible.…”

“…2A). The US was a 2-s section of a ''car-wreck'' sound, as previously described (Antov et al, 2013), presented binaurally at 95 dB(A). A triangle and a pentagon were counterbalanced to serve as the CS+ (associated with the US) and the CS− (not followed by US).…”

“…Skin conductance responses (SCRs) to the conditioning stimuli were scored and range-corrected as described previously (Antov et al, 2013), and square root transformed. Differential SCR (diffSCR) was computed by subtracting each CS− from the corresponding CS+ response.…”