The genetic covariation between fear conditioning and self-report fears.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Fear conditioning is a traditional model for the acquisition of phobias, whereas behavioral therapies use processes underlying extinction to treat phobic and other anxiety disorders. Furthermore, fear conditioning has been proposed as an endophenotype for genetic studies of anxiety disorders. Although prior studies have demonstrated that fear conditioning and self-report fears are heritable, no studies have determined whether they share a common genetic basis.

Methods

We obtained fear conditioning data from 173 twin pairs from the Swedish Twin Registry who also provided self-report ratings of 16 common fears. With multivariate structural equation modeling, we analyzed factor-derived scores for the subjective fear ratings together with the electrophysiologic skin c

SUBMITTER: Hettema JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2268873 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature