Stress increases aversive prediction error signal in the ventral striatum.

ABSTRACT: From job interviews to the heat of battle, it is evident that people think and learn differently when stressed. In fact, learning under stress may have long-term consequences; stress facilitates aversive conditioning and associations learned during extreme stress may result in debilitating emotional responses in posttraumatic stress disorder. The mechanisms underpinning such stress-related associations, however, are unknown. Computational neuroscience has successfully characterized several mechanisms critical for associative learning under normative conditions. One such mechanism, the detection of a mismatch between expected and observed outcomes within the ventral striatum (i.e., "prediction errors"), is thought to be a critical precursor to the formation of new stimulus-outcome associati

SUBMITTER: Robinson OJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3593853 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature