López-Moraga Alba, Luyten Laura, Beckers Tom
Centre for the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Leuven Brain Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Sci Rep. 2025 Mar 21;15(1):9730. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-94265-x.
Understanding anxiety-related disorders can be advanced by studying the fear learning mechanisms implicated in the transition from adaptive to maladaptive fear. Individuals with anxiety disorders often show impaired fear extinction, pervasive avoidance, and overgeneralization of fear. While these characteristics are usually studied in isolation, their interactions are less understood. We modified the platform-mediated avoidance task to chart avoidance, generalization, and extinction in male and female rats. Male rats acquired avoidance, showed a gradient of generalization, and reduced avoidance and fear under extinction. Female rats also learned avoidance, showed gradual generalization, and extinction of defensive behaviors. Sex differences emerged in extinction learning but were subtler than expected. We present an open-source automated system for processing DeepLabCut and SimBA output to score avoidance and freezing behavior. This task effectively probes avoidance, generalization, and extinction of fear in rats, and our automated scoring approach offers a effective method to quantify defensive behaviors.
通过研究从适应性恐惧向适应不良恐惧转变过程中涉及的恐惧学习机制，可以推动对焦虑相关障碍的理解。焦虑症患者通常表现出恐惧消退受损、普遍回避和恐惧过度泛化。虽然这些特征通常是单独研究的，但它们之间的相互作用却鲜为人知。我们修改了平台介导的回避任务，以记录雄性和雌性大鼠的回避、泛化和消退情况。雄性大鼠学会了回避，表现出泛化梯度，并在消退时减少了回避和恐惧。雌性大鼠也学会了回避，表现出逐渐泛化和防御行为的消退。在消退学习中出现了性别差异，但比预期的要微妙。我们提出了一个开源自动化系统，用于处理DeepLabCut和SimBA输出，以对回避和僵住行为进行评分。这项任务有效地探究了大鼠的回避、泛化和恐惧消退，我们的自动评分方法提供了一种量化防御行为的有效方法。
