Updating Fearful Memories with Extinction Training during Reconsolidation: A Human Study Using Auditory Aversive Stimuli

Javiera P Oyarzún, Diana Lopez-Barroso, Lluís Fuentemilla, David Cucurell, Carmen Pedraza, Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells and Ruth de Diego-Balaguer

PLOS ONE, 2012, vol. 7, issue 6, 1-9

Abstract: Learning to fear danger in the environment is essential to survival, but dysregulation of the fear system is at the core of many anxiety disorders. As a consequence, a great interest has emerged in developing strategies for suppressing fear memories in maladaptive cases. Recent research has focused in the process of reconsolidation where memories become labile after being retrieved. In a behavioral manipulation, Schiller et al., (2010) reported that extinction training, administrated during memory reconsolidation, could erase fear responses. The implications of this study are crucial for the possible treatment of anxiety disorders without the administration of drugs. However, attempts to replicate this effect by other groups have been so far unsuccessful. We sought out to reproduce Schiller et al., (2010) findings in a different fear conditioning paradigm based on auditory aversive stimuli instead of electric shock. Following a within-subject design, participants were conditioned to two different sounds and skin conductance response (SCR) was recorded as a measure of fear. Our results demonstrated that only the conditioned stimulus that was reminded 10 minutes before extinction training did not reinstate a fear response after a reminder trial consisting of the presentation of the unconditioned stimuli. For the first time, we replicated Schiller et al., (2010) behavioral manipulation and extended it to an auditory fear conditioning paradigm.

Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0038849 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 38849&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0038849

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0038849

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().