Contextual reinstatement promotes extinction generalization in healthy adults but not PTSD.

ABSTRACT: For episodic memories, reinstating the mental context of a past experience improves retrieval of memories formed during that experience. Does context reinstatement serve a similar role for implicit, associative memories such as fear and extinction? Here, we used a fear extinction paradigm to investigate whether the retrieval of extinction (safety) memories is associated with reactivation of the mental context from extinction memory formation. In a two-day Pavlovian conditioning, extinction, and renewal protocol, we collected functional MRI data while healthy adults and adults with PTSD symptoms learned that conditioned stimuli (CSs) signaled threat through association with an electrical shock. Following acquisition, conceptually related exemplars from the CS category no longer signaled thr

SUBMITTER: Hennings AC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7554263 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature