Towards an unconscious neural reinforcement intervention for common fears.

ABSTRACT: Can "hardwired" physiological fear responses (e.g., for spiders and snakes) be reprogramed unconsciously in the human brain? Currently, exposure therapy is among the most effective treatments for anxiety disorders, but this intervention is subjectively aversive to patients, causing many to drop out of treatment prematurely. Here we introduce a method to bypass the subjective unpleasantness in conscious exposure, by directly pairing monetary reward with unconscious occurrences of decoded representations of naturally feared animals in the brain. To decode physiological fear representations without triggering excessively aversive reactions, we capitalize on recent advancements in functional magnetic resonance imaging decoding techniques, and use a method called hyperalignment to infer the rel

SUBMITTER: Taschereau-Dumouchel V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5879705 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature