Fear conditioning

How do social fears in adolescence develop? Fear conditioning shapes attention orienting to social threat cues.

by Anneke Haddad

Haddad, A. D. M., Lissek, S., Pine, D. S., & Lau, J. Y. F. (2011). How do social fears in adolescence develop? fear conditioning shapes attention orienting to social threat cues. Cognition and Emotion, 25(6), 1139-1147.

Social fears emerging in adolescence can have negative effects on emotional well-being. Yet the mechanisms by which... more Social fears emerging in adolescence can have negative effects on emotional well-being. Yet the mechanisms by which these risks occur are unknown. One possibility is that associative learning results in fears to previously neutral social stimuli. Such conditioned responses may alter subsequent processing of social stimuli. We used a novel conditioning task to examine how associative processes influence social fear and attention orienting in adolescents. Neutral photographs were paired with socially rewarding or aversive stimuli during conditioning; a dot-probe task then assessed biases in attention orienting. The social conditioning task modified subjective ratings of the neutral stimuli. Moreover, for the neutral stimulus that was paired with the aversive stimulus, the strength of conditioning showed a relationship with subsequent attentional vigilance. The findings elucidate mechanisms by which negative peer experiences during adolescence may affect emotional processing.

Time determines the neural circuit underlying associative fear learning

by Nicolas Guyon

NMDA Mediated Contextual Conditioning Changes miRNA Expression

by Min Jeong Kye

Effects of extinction in multiple contexts on the renewal of associative tolerance to ethanol

by Gonzalo Miguez

Betancourt, R., Corada, L., Dominichetti, J., Laborda, M., Martinez, G., & Miguez, G. (2008). [Effects of extinction in multiple contexts on the renewal of associative tolerance to ethanol] Efecto de la extinción en múltiples contextos en la renovación de la tolerancia asociativa al etanol. Psicothema, 20, 285-289.

The Pavlovian analysis of drug tolerance describes how the contexts of drug administration participate in the... more The Pavlovian analysis of drug tolerance describes how the contexts of drug administration participate in the elicitation of compensatory conditioned responses that are, at least partly, responsible for tolerance. Findings indicate that if an association is acquired in one context and extinguished in another one, when exposing the subjects to the acquisition context, renewal of the conditioned response will take place. Ambiguous evidence exists about whether or not this effect diminishes when extinguishing the association in multiple contexts. This investigation evaluates the existence of the phenomenon of renewal of tolerance to ethanol, and whether it diminishes by the extinction in multiple contexts. Evidence of renewal of tolerance to ethanol in rats was found, but no diminution was observed when extinguishing in multiple contexts.

The affect misattribution procedure: hot or not?

by Isabell Hühnel

Co-authored with Blaison and others, in press in 'Emotion'

The Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Payne et al., 2005) is an important tool in implicit social cognition... more The Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Payne et al., 2005) is an important tool in implicit social cognition research, but its underlying mechanisms are still unknown. This paper investigates whether, as the name implies, affect-based processes really underlie the AMP. We used a modified AMP that enabled us to separate the influence of affective and non-affective processes. In three studies, evidence for the implication of non-affective processes was consistently found. In contrast, there was no evidence for affect-based processes. Thus, the AMP rather seems cold than hot. The generalizability of the results obtained with the modified AMP is discussed.

Placing prediction into the fear circuit

by Gavan McNally

Hippocampus and Contextual Fear Conditioning: Recent Controversies and Advances

by Stephan Anagnostaras

Seeking a Spotless Mind: Extinction, Deconsolidation, and Erasure of Fear Memory

by Stephen Maren

Learning to contend with threats in the environment is essential to survival, but dysregulation of memories for... more Learning to contend with threats in the environment is essential to survival, but dysregulation of memories for traumatic events can lead to disabling psychopathology. Recent years have witnessed an impressive growth in our understanding of the neural systems and synaptic mechanisms underlying emotional memory forma- tion. As a consequence, interest has emerged in developing strategies for suppressing, if not eliminating, fear memories. Here, I review recent work employing sophisticated behavioral, pharmacological, and molecular tools to target fear memories, placing these memories firmly behind the crosshairs of neurobiologically informed interventions.

Long-lasting incubation of conditioned fear in rats

by Sam Golden

Alcohol exposure during adolescence impairs auditory fear conditioning in adult Long-Evans rats

by Hadley Bergstrom