Mosig Carina, Merz Christian J, Mohr Cornelia, Adolph Dirk, Wolf Oliver T, Schneider Silvia, Margraf Jürgen, Zlomuzica Armin
Mental Health Research and Treatment Center, Ruhr-University Bochum , Bochum , Germany.
Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum , Bochum , Germany.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2014 Oct 1;8:328. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00328. eCollection 2014.
Avoidance is considered as a central hallmark of all anxiety disorders. The acquisition and expression of avoidance, which leads to the maintenance and exacerbation of pathological fear is closely linked to Pavlovian and operant conditioning processes. Changes in conditionability might represent a key feature of all anxiety disorders but the exact nature of these alterations might vary across different disorders. To date, no information is available on specific changes in conditionability for disorder-irrelevant stimuli in specific phobia (SP). The first aim of this study was to investigate changes in fear acquisition and extinction in spider-fearful individuals as compared to non-fearful participants by using the de novo fear conditioning paradigm. Secondly, we aimed to determine whether differences in the magnitude of context-dependent fear retrieval exist between spider-fearful and non-fearful individuals. Our findings point to an enhanced fear discrimination in spider-fearful individuals as compared to non-fearful individuals at both the physiological and subjective level. The enhanced fear discrimination in spider-fearful individuals was neither mediated by increased state anxiety, depression, nor stress tension. Spider-fearful individuals displayed no changes in extinction learning and/or fear retrieval. Surprisingly, we found no evidence for context-dependent modulation of fear retrieval in either group. Here, we provide first evidence that spider-fearful individuals show an enhanced discriminative fear learning of phobia-irrelevant (de novo) stimuli. Our findings provide novel insights into the role of fear acquisition and expression for the development and maintenance of maladaptive responses in the course of SP.
回避被视为所有焦虑症的核心特征。回避行为的习得与表现会导致病理性恐惧的维持和加剧，这与巴甫洛夫条件反射和操作性条件反射过程密切相关。条件反射能力的变化可能是所有焦虑症的关键特征，但这些改变的确切性质可能因不同的焦虑症而异。迄今为止，尚无关于特定恐惧症（SP）中与疾病无关的刺激的条件反射能力具体变化的信息。本研究的首要目的是通过使用全新恐惧条件反射范式，调查蜘蛛恐惧症患者与非恐惧参与者相比在恐惧习得和消退方面的变化。其次，我们旨在确定蜘蛛恐惧症患者与非恐惧个体之间在情境依赖性恐惧恢复程度上是否存在差异。我们的研究结果表明，在生理和主观层面上，蜘蛛恐惧症患者与非恐惧个体相比，恐惧辨别能力增强。蜘蛛恐惧症患者增强的恐惧辨别能力既不是由状态焦虑、抑郁或应激紧张的增加介导的。蜘蛛恐惧症患者在消退学习和/或恐惧恢复方面没有表现出变化。令人惊讶的是，我们在两组中均未发现恐惧恢复存在情境依赖性调节的证据。在此，我们首次提供证据表明，蜘蛛恐惧症患者对与恐惧症无关（全新）的刺激表现出增强的辨别性恐惧学习。我们的研究结果为恐惧习得和表现在特定恐惧症过程中对适应不良反应的发展和维持所起的作用提供了新的见解。
