Immediate pre-learning stress enhances baseline startle response and fear acquisition in a fear-potentiated startle paradigm

Childhood Maltreatment in Females Is Associated with Enhanced Fear Acquisition and an Overgeneralization of Fear

“…We found that high childhood maltreatment was associated with greater baseline startle responses in females only. This is related to previous work from our laboratory [ 46 ] in which females exhibited significantly greater baseline startle responses than males (childhood maltreatment was not assessed in this previous work, however). In the present study, high childhood maltreatment was also associated with greater fear-potentiated startle responses to the CS+ during late acquisition in females, but not males, a finding consistent with the observation of enhanced fear-potentiated startle in females who have experienced psychological trauma [ 53 ].…”

“…Two-way ANOVAs were used to analyze the state and trait components of the STAI, the ASI-3, the PCL-C, and the CES-D, with childhood maltreatment (high, low) and sex (male, female) as the between-subjects factors. Similar to previous work employing the fear-potentiated startle paradigm (e.g., [ 46 , 47 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 54 ]), we quantified fear-potentiated startle by computing a difference score for the EMG recordings [(startle magnitude to the CS+, CS−, or GS in each block)—(startle magnitude to the NA trials in each block)]. Raw difference scores allowed us to calculate fear-potentiated startle responses based on each participant’s startle responses to the NA trials and is supported by research demonstrating their superiority to standardized difference scores and percent change scores [ 65 ].…”

“…airblast aimed at the larynx. A similar airblast has been used in previous work and reliably generates fear-potentiated startle (e.g., [ 45 , 46 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 ]). The startle probe was a 40-ms, 108-dB burst of white noise that was delivered to participants through a pair of headphones.…”

“…When each stimulus was presented on the computer monitor, participants pressed an “AIR” key if they expected the US to occur, a “NO AIR” key if they did not expect the US to occur, and a “?” key if they were unsure if the US would occur. For data analysis, “AIR” responses were scored as +1, “?” responses were scored as 0, and “NO AIR” responses were scored as −1 [ 45 , 46 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 ].…”

“…Given the limited work in this area, the purpose of the present study was to assess the impact of childhood maltreatment on differential fear conditioning and fear generalization in a non-clinical sample of young adults using established psychophysiological methods (e.g., [ 45 , 46 ]). Previous work has demonstrated that childhood maltreatment results in physiological and behavioral changes that lead to perturbed fear circuitry.…”