Enhanced Discriminative Fear Learning of Phobia-Irrelevant Stimuli in Spider-Fearful Individuals

Mosig, Carina; Merz, Christian J.; Mohr, C; Adolph, Dirk; Wolf, Oliver T.; Schneider, Silvia; Margraf, Jürgen; Zlomuzica, Armin

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00328

Cited by 19 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 93 publications

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“…The findings that the HA showed better contingency awareness than the LA group, and enhanced neuronal activation towards CS+ in the M1 and M170 time-intervals during fear acquisition, support the idea that enhanced conditionability (e.g., Orr et al, 2000 ) is a vulnerability factor for the development of anxiety disorders. This is in line with other classical conditioning studies in which fear memory was more easily acquired (e.g., Orr et al, 2000 ; Holloway et al, 2012 ; Caulfield et al, 2013 ; Mosig et al, 2014 ) and more resistant to extinction (e.g., Pitman and Orr, 1986 ; Orr et al, 2000 ; Peri et al, 2000 ) in clinically and subclinically anxious than in non-anxious individuals. Our present study extends such findings, showing that high trait anxiety facilitates fear acquisition of multiple CS+/US associations, even in cognitively challenging and ambiguous situations, and with strongly reduced contingency awareness.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…First, enhanced conditionability and reduced fear inhibition could represent vulnerability factors for different types of anxiety disorders. As suggested by Mosig et al ( 2014 ), reduced fear inhibition to the safety stimulus during fear extinction mainly characterizes post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), whereas specific phobias, such as spider phobia, seem associated with enhanced fear acquisition. Second, both mechanisms could have a differential impact during the course of fear acquisition.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rapid prefrontal cortex activation towards aversively paired faces and enhanced contingency detection are observed in highly trait-anxious women under challenging conditions

Rehbein

Wessing

Zwitserlood

et al. 2015

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Relative to healthy controls, anxiety-disorder patients show anomalies in classical conditioning that may either result from, or provide a risk factor for, clinically relevant anxiety. Here, we investigated whether healthy participants with enhanced anxiety vulnerability show abnormalities in a challenging affective-conditioning paradigm, in which many stimulus-reinforcer associations had to be acquired with only few learning trials. Forty-seven high and low trait-anxious females underwent MultiCS conditioning, in which 52 different neutral faces (CS+) were paired with an aversive noise (US), while further 52 faces (CS−) remained unpaired. Emotional learning was assessed by evaluative (rating), behavioral (dot-probe, contingency report), and neurophysiological (magnetoencephalography) measures before, during, and after learning. High and low trait-anxious groups did not differ in evaluative ratings or response priming before or after conditioning. High trait-anxious women, however, were better than low trait-anxious women at reporting CS+/US contingencies after conditioning, and showed an enhanced prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation towards CS+ in the M1 (i.e., 80–117 ms) and M170 time intervals (i.e., 140–160 ms) during acquisition. These effects in MultiCS conditioning observed in individuals with elevated trait anxiety are consistent with theories of enhanced conditionability in anxiety vulnerability. Furthermore, they point towards increased threat monitoring and detection in highly trait-anxious females, possibly mediated by alterations in visual working memory.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid prefrontal cortex activation towards aversively paired faces and enhanced contingency detection are observed in highly trait-anxious women under challenging conditions

Rehbein

Wessing

Zwitserlood

et al. 2015

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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show abstract

“…fear conditioning. The differential conditioning paradigm is described in detail in Mosig et al 19 . Briefly, the reinforced (CS+) and unreinforced (CS−) conditioned stimuli were a high (300 Hz) and a low frequency (135 Hz) tone, which were presented for 8 s via headphones (60 dB).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The next step was initiated when fear had decreased to a SUDS of 30 or below. All steps of the 23 , the Mini-DIPS 24 and the fear conditioning task 19 . At the end of the session, participants received information about the exposure treatment, psychoeducation about spider phobia, and filled in the spider-fear related questionnaires (#1).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The association between fear extinction, the ability to accomplish exposure and exposure therapy outcome in specific phobia

Raeder

Merz

Margraf

2020

Sci Rep

Self Cite

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Great interest exists in maximizing exposure therapy efficacy in anxiety disorders. At the same time, reduced frequency and shortened duration of exposure sessions are required to meet the specific regularities in routine care settings. extinction has emerged as the key mechanism of exposure treatment in anxiety disorders. examining exposure treatment processes from the perspective of extinction learning might provide novel insights into variability in exposure treatment duration and outcome. the present study sought to examine the functional link between fear extinction, the ability to accomplish exposure in a predetermined time and exposure therapy outcome in specific phobia. treatment-seeking individuals (N = 53) with spider phobia underwent a context-dependent fear conditioning paradigm prior to a standardized exposure. Spider-phobic participants who were able to complete exposure within the pre-determined time (i.e., completers) showed a more pronounced shortand long-term exposure therapy benefit. In the fear conditioning task, a more pronounced decline in CS-US contingency ratings during extinction (retrieval) was found in completers relative to noncompleters. The failure to further extinguish US expectancy to the CSs in non-completers might offer a potential mechanistic explanation why non-completers have difficulties to accomplish all exposure steps in a fixed time and show less pronounced treatment gains. Our findings bear specific implications for the implementation of exposure treatment to routine care settings.Exposure is considered as the treatment of choice for anxiety disorders. Exposure therapy is aimed at helping patients to overcome their anxiety by creating a safe environment, in which they are repeatedly and systematically exposed to feared or avoided scenarios, leading to decreases of fear 1,2 . Despite its effectiveness, some patients show no or only a partial remission of symptoms or experience a recovery of symptoms after treatment 3 . Likewise, some patients exhibit a delayed therapeutic benefit, requiring an extended treatment duration and frequency 4 . This, however, is at odds with the organizational and economic demands in routine care, which requires efficient time schedules and reduction of treatment-associated costs 5 . The frequency and duration of exposure sessions thus needs to be adapted to the specific regularities in routine care settings (e.g. see 6 ). The identification of new pathways to improve exposure treatment efficacy while at the same time decreasing barriers to transfer exposure treatment to routine care would be highly desirable 7 . So far, only little is known about mechanisms contributing to treatment duration and short-and long-term treatment outcome.Extinction has emerged as a central candidate for the main process underlying exposure 8 . Consequently, research on the cognitive and neurobiological foundations of extinction as the laboratory analog of exposure might pave the way to understand and improve exposure treatment efficacy. Ultimately, by bridging the g...

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Classical Conditioning

Hermann

Sperl

2023

Autism and Child Psychopathology Series

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Enhanced Discriminative Fear Learning of Phobia-Irrelevant Stimuli in Spider-Fearful Individuals

Cited by 19 publications

References 93 publications

Rapid prefrontal cortex activation towards aversively paired faces and enhanced contingency detection are observed in highly trait-anxious women under challenging conditions

Rapid prefrontal cortex activation towards aversively paired faces and enhanced contingency detection are observed in highly trait-anxious women under challenging conditions

The association between fear extinction, the ability to accomplish exposure and exposure therapy outcome in specific phobia

Classical Conditioning

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