High trait anxiety blocks olfactory plasticity induced by aversive learning.

ABSTRACT: Aversive learning normally induces alterations in sensory function as the brain's sensory systems are tuned to optimize detection and discrimination of threat-predictive stimuli. Anxiety disorders can disrupt behavioral discrimination between threat-predictive and neutral stimuli, resulting in overgeneralization of negative affective responses to non-threatening situations. We thus hypothesized that anxiety could disrupt learning-induced improvement in sensory discrimination. We tested perceptual discrimination between similar odorants before and after discriminative aversive conditioning. Participants exhibiting normal levels of trait anxiety developed a larger skin conductance response (SCR) to the shock-predictive odorant and substantial improvement in their perceptual discrimination be

SUBMITTER: Rosenthal MC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9038709 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature