Conditioned fear extinction and reinstatement in a human fear-potentiated startle paradigm
- Seth D. Norrholm1,2,3,7,
- Tanja Jovanovic1,2,3,
- Bram Vervliet4,5,
- Karyn M. Myers3,
- Michael Davis1,3,6,
- Barbara O. Rothbaum1, and
- Erica J. Duncan1,2,3
- 1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA;
- 2 Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Mental Health Service Line 116A, Decatur, Georgia 30033, USA;
- 3 Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, Atlanta, Georgia 30302, USA;
- 4 Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium;
- 5 Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands;
- 6 Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to analyze fear extinction and reinstatement in humans using fear-potentiated startle. Participants were fear conditioned using a simple discrimination procedure with colored lights as the conditioned stimuli (CSs) and an airblast to the throat as the unconditioned stimulus (US). Participants were extinguished 24 h after fear conditioning. Upon presentation of unsignaled USs after extinction, participants displayed significant fear reinstatement. In summary, these procedures produced robust fear-potentiated startle, significant CS+/CS− discrimination, within-session extinction, and significant reinstatement. This is the first demonstration of fear extinction and reinstatement in humans using startle measures.
Footnotes
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↵7 Corresponding author.
↵7 E-mail Seth.Norrholm{at}va.gov; fax: (404) 417-2911.
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Article is online at http://www.learnmem.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/lm.393906
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- Received August 2, 2006.
- Accepted September 27, 2006.
- Copyright © 2006, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press