Karolinska Institutet, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Psychology Section, 17177 Stockholm, Sweden.
Biol Psychol. 2012 Oct;91(2):292-301. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.07.007. Epub 2012 Aug 9.
Fear extinction can be viewed as an inhibitory learning process. This is supported by post-extinction phenomena demonstrating the return of fear, such as reinstatement. Recent work has questioned this account, claiming that extinction initiated immediately after fear acquisition can abolish the return of fear. In the current study, participants were fear conditioned to four different conditioned stimuli (CS) and underwent extinction either immediately or after a 24 h delay. During extinction, we manipulated CS contingency awareness by presenting two of the CSs (one CS+, one CS-) under non-masked conditions and the other two CSs under masked conditions. Compared to delayed extinction, immediate extinction of non-masked CSs promoted less extinction of fear-potentiated startle and shock expectancy ratings and less reinstatement of fear-potentiated startle without affecting shock expectancy ratings. Critically, future research should clarify how the differences between immediate and delayed extinction in within-session extinction modulate the recovery of fear.
恐惧消退可以被视为一种抑制性学习过程。这一观点得到了消退后现象的支持，这些现象表明恐惧会重新出现，例如再现。最近的研究对这一解释提出了质疑，声称在恐惧获得后立即进行的消退可以消除恐惧的回归。在当前的研究中，参与者被恐惧地条件化到四个不同的条件刺激（CS），并立即或在 24 小时延迟后进行消退。在消退过程中，我们通过在非掩蔽条件下呈现两个 CS（一个 CS+，一个 CS-），而在掩蔽条件下呈现另外两个 CS，来操纵 CS 连续性意识。与延迟消退相比，非掩蔽 CS 的立即消退促进了对惊吓增强起始和惊吓预期评分的恐惧消退减少，并且在不影响惊吓预期评分的情况下促进了对惊吓增强起始的恐惧再现。至关重要的是，未来的研究应该阐明在单次会话消退中，即时和延迟消退之间的差异如何调节恐惧的恢复。
