Dissociable neural signatures of passive extinction and instrumental control over threatening events.

ABSTRACT: Aberrant fear learning processes are assumed to be a key factor in the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders. Thus, effective behavioral interventions to reduce dysfunctional fear responding are needed. Beyond passive extinction learning, instrumental control over threatening events is thought to diminish fear. However, the neural mechanisms underlying instrumental control-and to what extent these differ from extinction-are not well understood. We therefore contrasted the neural signatures of instrumental control and passive extinction using an aversive learning task, relative to a control condition. Participants (n = 64) could either learn to exert instrumental control over electric shocks, received a yoked number and sequence of shocks without instrumental control or did not receive any shoc

SUBMITTER: Wanke N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7393280 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature