The conditioning and extinction of fear in youths: What's sex got to do with it?

Chauret, Mélissa; Buissonnière-Ariza, Valérie La; Tremblay, Vickie Lamoureux; Suffren, Sabrina; Servonnet, Alice; Pine, Daniel S.; Maheu, Françoise S.

doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2014.06.001

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Although gender [59] and neuroticism [63] do not appear to be associated with differential conditioning in unaffected youth, several other influential factors have been identified. These include the type of conditioned stimuli [62], contingency awareness [61], attention bias [60], parental clinical psychopathology [64], and youth subclinical psychopathology [65,66]. When examining threat generalization across stimuli, evidence suggests that unaffected youth exhibit greater threat generalization than adults [61,68].…”

Section: Threat Conditioning and Extinction In Unaffected Youthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, several reports indicate that extinction is achieved for SCR, FPS, and SR measures among youth [36,57,63,67]; whereas other studies indicate that the CRs persists for SCR and SR measures after extinction [36,58,60,62-64,67]. With regard to examining extinction retention and generalization, 9-10 year olds reported greater SR fear to stimuli resembling the CS+, compared to 5-8 year olds [67].…”

Section: Threat Conditioning and Extinction In Unaffected Youthmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Extinction learning in childhood anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder: implications for treatment

McGuire

Orr

Essoe

et al. 2016

Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics

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Introduction Threat conditioning and extinction play an important role in anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although these conditions commonly affect children, threat conditioning and extinction have been primarily studied in adults. However, differences in phenomenology and neural architecture prohibit the generalization of adult findings to youth. Areas covered A comprehensive literature search using PubMed and PsycInfo was conducted to identify studies that have used differential conditioning tasks to examine threat acquisition and extinction in youth. The information obtained from this review helps to clarify the influence of these processes on the etiology and treatment of youth with OCD, PTSD and other anxiety disorders. Thirty studies of threat conditioning and extinction were identified. Expert Commentary Youth with anxiety disorders, OCD, and PTSD have largely comparable threat acquisition relative to unaffected controls, with some distinctions noted for youth with PTSD or youth who have suffered maltreatment. However, impaired extinction was consistently observed across youth with these disorders and appears to be consistent with deficiencies in inhibitory learning. Incorporating strategies to improve inhibitory learning may improve extinction learning within extinction-based treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Strategies to improve inhibitory learning in CBT are discussed.

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Section: Threat Conditioning and Extinction In Unaffected Youthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Threat Conditioning and Extinction In Unaffected Youthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extinction learning in childhood anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder: implications for treatment

McGuire

Orr

Essoe

et al. 2016

Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics

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“…Importantly, other factors such as sex (Lebron-Milad et al, 2012;Milad et al, 2006Milad et al, , 2010Rosenbaum et al, 2015), gonadal hormones (Merz et al, 2012;Milad et al, 2006), education (Rosenbaum et al, 2015), age (Bellebaum & Daum, 2004;Rosenbaum et al, 2015), ethnicity (Martínez, Franco-Chaves, Milad, & Quirk, 2014;Nelson, Bishop, Sarapas, Kittles, & Shankman, 2014), personality traits (Otto et al, 2007), and genetic factors (Åhs, Frick, Furmark, & Fredrikson, 2014;Hettema, Annas, Neale, Kendler, & Fredrikson, 2003;Hindi Attar, Finckh, & Büchel, 2012;Klucken et al, 2014;Lonsdorf et al, 2009;Merrill, Steinmetz, Viken, & Rose, 1999;Wendt et al, 2015) have also been shown to modulate conditionability. Importantly, it is common for fear conditioning studies to exclude participants due to poor evidence of a conditioned SCR (Chauret et al, 2014;Milad, Orr, Pitman, & Rauch, 2005;Oyarzún et al, 2012;Phelps, Delgado, Nearing, & LeDoux, 2004;Spring et al, 2015). The percentage of exclusions reported varies across studies and can go from 4% (Chauret et al, 2014) up to 19% (Oyarzún et al, 2012.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Importantly, it is common for fear conditioning studies to exclude participants due to poor evidence of a conditioned SCR (Chauret et al, 2014;Milad, Orr, Pitman, & Rauch, 2005;Oyarzún et al, 2012;Phelps, Delgado, Nearing, & LeDoux, 2004;Spring et al, 2015). The percentage of exclusions reported varies across studies and can go from 4% (Chauret et al, 2014) up to 19% (Oyarzún et al, 2012. The exclusion of participants is usually based on very small SCRs to the unconditioned stimulus (US), that is, the unconditioned response (UCR), or to a given number of CS+ trials during conditioning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Absence of conditioned responding in humans: A bad measure or individual differences?

Marin

Barbey²,

Rosenbaum

et al. 2019

Psychophysiology

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Skin conductance response (SCR) is often used as an index of conditioned fear. SCR has been shown to be highly variable, and absence of SC reactivity is sometimes used as criteria for excluding data. It is, however, possible that low or no SC reactivity is the result of a distinct biological signature that underlies individual differences in SCR reactivity. This study examined neural correlates associated with the near absence of SCR conditionability. Archival data from 109 healthy adults aged 18–60 years were pooled. All individuals had participated in a fear conditioning protocol in a fMRI environment, during which two cues were partially reinforced (CS+) with a shock and a third cue was not (CS−). Using SCR to the conditioned stimuli and differential SCR (CS+ minus CS−), we created two groups of 30 individuals: low conditioners (defined as those showing the smallest SCR to the CS+ and smallest differential SCR) and high conditioners (defined as those showing the largest SCR to the CS+ and largest differential SCR). Our analyses showed differences in patterns of brain activations between these two groups during conditioning in the following regions: dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, and insular cortex. Our findings suggest that low or absent SCR conditionability is associated with hypoactivation of brain regions involved in fear learning and expression. This highlights the need to be cautious when excluding SCR nonconditioners and to consider the potential implications of such exclusion when interpreting the findings from studies of conditioned fear.

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“…In contrast, two other studies found no impact of hormonal differences in fear extinction learning on SCR [ 25 , 30 ]. This discrepancy could be because the former study used male faces as stimuli, and there is some evidence that at least in youth, males show greater fear acquisition and decreased fear extinction learning in response to male faces [ 31 ]. Li and Graham did however show that women with high estradiol displayed greater CS− expectancies during early extinction trials, and hormonal contraceptive users displayed lower expectancy ratings to the safety signal than did men during fear extinction [ 32 ].…”

Section: Gonadal Hormone Effects In Community Samplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Translational Models of Fear Conditioning to Uncover Sex-Linked Factors Related to PTSD Risk

Rosenhauer

Owens

Glover

2022

J Psychiatry Brain Sci

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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating neuropsychiatric disorder that follows exposure to a traumatic event; however, not every person who experiences trauma will develop PTSD. Women are more likely to be diagnosed with PTSD than men even when controlling for type and amount of trauma exposure. Circulating levels of gonadal hormones such as estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone may contribute to differential risk for developing PTSD. In this review, we briefly consider the influence of gonadal hormones on fear conditioning processes including fear acquisition, fear inhibition, extinction learning, and extinction recall within translational neuroscience models. We discuss findings from human studies incorporating samples from both community and traumatized clinical populations to further understand how these hormones might interact with exposure to trauma. Additionally, we propose that special attention should be paid to the specific measure used to examine fear conditioning processes as there is evidence that common psychophysiological indices such as skin conductance response and fear-potentiated startle can reveal quite different results and thus necessitate nuanced interpretations. Continued research to understand the influence of gonadal hormones in fear learning and extinction processes will provide further insight into the increased risk women have of developing PTSD and provide new targets for the treatment and prevention of this disorder.

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The conditioning and extinction of fear in youths: What's sex got to do with it?

Cited by 12 publications

References 65 publications

Extinction learning in childhood anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder: implications for treatment

Extinction learning in childhood anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder: implications for treatment

Absence of conditioned responding in humans: A bad measure or individual differences?

Using Translational Models of Fear Conditioning to Uncover Sex-Linked Factors Related to PTSD Risk

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