Novelty-facilitated extinction: providing a novel outcome in place of an expected threat diminishes recovery of defensive responses.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Experimental extinction serves as a model for psychiatric treatments based on associative learning. However, the effects of extinction are often transient, as evidenced by postextinction return of defensive behaviors. From a therapeutic perspective, an inherent problem with extinction may be that mere omission of threat is not sufficient to reduce future threat uncertainty. The current study tested an augmented form of extinction that replaced, rather than merely omitted, expected threat outcomes with novel nonthreat outcomes, with the goal of reducing postextinction return of defensive behaviors.

Methods

Thirty-two healthy male Sprague-Dawley rats and 47 human adults underwent threat conditioning to a conditioned stimulus paired with an electrical shock. Subjects

SUBMITTER: Dunsmoor JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4469636 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature