Research Center, Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal, 7331 Hochelaga Street, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H1N 3J4; Department of Psychiatry and Addictology, Université de Montréal, 2900 Édouard-Montpetit Boulevard, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3T 1J4.
Research Center, Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal, 7331 Hochelaga Street, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H1N 3J4; Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, 100 Sherbrooke Street W, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H2X 2P3.
Behav Res Ther. 2020 Jun;129:103615. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2020.103615. Epub 2020 Apr 10.
Stress and fear are two fields of research that have evolved simultaneously. It was not until the eighties that these domains converged in order to better characterize the impact of stress on fear memory formation. Here, we reviewed the effects of stress occurring before fear acquisition on the main phases of fear conditioning protocols (acquisition training, extinction training, extinction retention test), with a specific focus on sex and sex hormones. We also paid close attention to methodological aspects in order to better understand and characterize discrepant findings across studies. In men, stress appears to potentiate fear acquisition at a physiological level but induces lower activations of fear-related brain regions. In women, results are inconsistent. Although some studies have shown that stress lowers physiological fear responses and heightens brain activations in women during fear acquisition, many studies report no significant effects. Irrespective of sex, pre-acquisition stress seems to induce fear extinction learning resistance. Overall, few studies have taken into account sex hormones, despite their impact on both the fear and stress brain networks. As methodological variability makes it complex to draw strong conclusions, several methodological aspects are discussed with the aim of orienting future research.
应激和恐惧是两个同时发展的研究领域。直到 80 年代，这两个领域才汇聚在一起，以便更好地描述应激对恐惧记忆形成的影响。在这里，我们回顾了恐惧获得之前发生的应激对恐惧条件反射协议的主要阶段（获得训练、消退训练、消退保持测试）的影响，特别关注了性别和性激素。我们还密切关注了方法学方面，以便更好地理解和描述不同研究之间的不一致发现。在男性中，应激似乎在生理水平上增强了恐惧的获得，但诱导了与恐惧相关的大脑区域的较低激活。在女性中，结果不一致。尽管一些研究表明，应激会降低女性在恐惧获得过程中的生理恐惧反应，并增强大脑的激活，但许多研究报告没有显著影响。无论性别如何，获得前的应激似乎会导致恐惧消退学习的抵抗。总的来说，很少有研究考虑到性激素，尽管它们对恐惧和应激大脑网络都有影响。由于方法学的可变性使得很难得出强有力的结论，因此讨论了几个方法学方面，以期为未来的研究提供指导。
