Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Leuven 3000, Belgium.
Annu Rev Clin Psychol. 2013;9:215-48. doi: 10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-050212-185542.
Exposure-based treatments for clinical anxiety generally are very effective, but relapse is not uncommon. Likewise, laboratory studies have shown that conditioned fears are easy to extinguish, but they recover easily. This analogy is striking, and numerous fear extinction studies have been published that highlight the processes responsible for the extinction and return of acquired fears. This review examines and integrates the most important results from animal and human work. Overall, the results suggest that fear extinction is relatively easy to "learn" but difficult to "remember." It follows that treatments will benefit from an enhanced focus on the long-term retrieval of fear extinction. We review the available studies on the prevention of return of fear and the prospects of weakening fear memories forever. We show that the behavioral principles outlined in learning theory provide a continuous inspiration for preclinical (neurobiological) and clinical research on the extinction and return of fear.
基于暴露的临床焦虑症治疗通常非常有效，但复发并不少见。同样，实验室研究表明，条件性恐惧很容易被消除，但它们很容易恢复。这种类比非常明显，许多恐惧消除研究已经发表，强调了导致获得性恐惧的消除和恢复的过程。这篇综述考察并整合了动物和人类工作中最重要的结果。总的来说，结果表明恐惧的消除相对容易“学习”，但难以“记住”。因此，治疗将受益于更加强调长期检索恐惧的消除。我们回顾了关于预防恐惧复发的现有研究，并探讨了永久性削弱恐惧记忆的可能性。我们表明，学习理论中概述的行为原则为恐惧的消除和恢复的临床前（神经生物学）和临床研究提供了持续的灵感。
