Reinstatement of contextual anxiety in humans: Effects of state anxiety

Glotzbach-Schoon, Evelyn; Andreatta, Marta; Mühlberger, Andreas; Pauli, Paul

doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.07.013

Cited by 14 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Our data represent an impact of state anxiety on the differentiability/generalization of cued return of fear while preliminary findings with identical directionality have been reported previously for trait anxiety (Kindt et al, 2009;Kindt & Soeter, 2013;Soeter & Kindt, 2010) and for contextual cues (Glotzbach-Schoon et al, 2015). Thereby, previous results for trait anxiety were somewhat inconsistent across the studies -in particular with respect to the dependent measures and experimental groups showing this effect.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…Interestingly however, while patients suffering from anxiety disorders show deficient CS discrimination already during fear acquisition and extinction (Duits et al, 2015;Lissek et al, 2005) and while trait anxiety has also been linked to deficits in CS-discrimination during conditioning and extinction (Haaker et al, 2013;Kindt & Soeter, 2014) the effect of state anxiety was specific to reinstatement induced ROF, as previously reported for context conditioning (Glotzbach-Schoon et al, 2015). As the effect of anxiety on fear and extinction associated processes is generally rather small and hence requires large sample sizes (Haaker et al, 2015), it remains to be investigated by future larger studies whether the effect of state 15 anxiety is indeed specific to ROF.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 51%

“…To integrate our results into the existing literature employing a categorical approach (e.g. Glotzbach-Schoon et al, 2015;), significant findings were followed up by exploratory analyses, categorically grouping participants into high and low STAI state anxious groups based on a median split (see Supplementary Materials).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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State anxiety modulates the return of fear

Kuhn

Mertens

Lonsdorf

2016

International Journal of Psychophysiology

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Current treatments for anxiety disorders are effective but limited by the high frequency of clinical relapse. Processes underlying relapse are thought to be experimentally modeled in fear conditioning experiments with return fear (ROF) inductions. Thereby reinstatementinduced ROF might be considered a model to study mechanisms underlying adversity-induced relapse. Previous studies have reported differential ROF (i.e. specific for the danger stimulus) but also generalized ROF (i.e. for safe and danger stimuli), but reasons for these divergent findings are not clear yet. Hence, the response pattern (i.e. differential or generalized) following reinstatement may be of importance for the prediction of risk or resilience for ROF.The aim of this study was to investigate state anxiety as a potential individual difference factor contributing to differentiability or generalization of return of fear.Thirty-six participants underwent instructed fear expression, extinction and ROF induction through reinstatement while physiological (skin conductance response, fear potentiated startle) and subjective measures of fear and US expectancy were acquired. Our data show that, as expected, high state anxious individuals show deficits in SCR discrimination between dangerous and safe cues after reinstatement induced ROF (i.e. generalization) as compared to low state anxious individuals.The ability to maintain discrimination under aversive circumstances is negatively associated with pathological anxiety and predictive of resilient responding while excessive generalization is a hallmark of anxiety disorders. Therefore, we suggest that experimentally induced ROF might prove useful in predicting relapse risk in clinical settings and might have implications for possible interventions for relapse prevention.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 51%

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State anxiety modulates the return of fear

Kuhn

Mertens

Lonsdorf

2016

International Journal of Psychophysiology

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“…All negative peak values were transformed to zero. We applied the following quality criteria: (a) all trials with a baseline shift ≥5 µV were rejected from further analysis (EBR, PAR); (b) peak startle magnitudes ≤5 µV in the window of analysis were converted to zero (EBR; Genheimer, Andreatta, Asan, & Pauli, ; Glotzbach‐Schoon, Andreatta, Mühlberger, & Pauli, ). Lastly, all data were t scored ( z scored × 10 + 50).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pupil dilation as an implicit measure of appetitive Pavlovian learning

et al. 2019

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Appetitive Pavlovian conditioning is a learning mechanism of fundamental biological and pathophysiological significance. Nonetheless, its exploration in humans remains sparse, which is partly attributed to the lack of an established psychophysiological parameter that aptly represents conditioned responding. This study evaluated pupil diameter and other ocular response measures (gaze dwelling time, blink duration and count) as indices of conditioning. Additionally, a learning model was used to infer participants’ learning progress on the basis of their pupil dilation. Twenty‐nine healthy volunteers completed an appetitive differential delay conditioning paradigm with a primary reward, while the ocular response measures along with other psychophysiological (heart rate, electrodermal activity, postauricular and eyeblink reflex) and behavioral (ratings, contingency awareness) parameters were obtained to examine the relation among different measures. A significantly stronger increase in pupil diameter, longer gaze duration and shorter eyeblink duration was observed in response to the reward‐predicting cue compared to the control cue. The Pearce‐Hall attention model best predicted the trial‐by‐trial pupil diameter. This conditioned response was corroborated by a pronounced heart rate deceleration to the reward‐predicting cue, while no conditioning effect was observed in the electrodermal activity or startle responses. There was no discernible correlation between the psychophysiological response measures. These results highlight the potential value of ocular response measures as sensitive indices for representing appetitive conditioning.

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“…92 CTX iVR, 2b ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Glotzbach-Schoon et al . 58 CTX iVR, 2b ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Andreatta et al . 40 CTX iVR, 2b&c ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Andreatta et al .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Context conditioning in humans using commercially available immersive Virtual Reality

Kroes

Dunsmoor

Mackey

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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Despite a wealth of knowledge on how humans and nonhuman animals learn to associate meaningful events with cues in the environment, far less is known about how humans learn to associate these events with the environment itself. Progress on understanding spatiotemporal contextual processes in humans has been slow in large measure by the methodological constraint of generating and manipulating immersive spatial environments in well-controlled laboratory settings. Fortunately, immersive Virtual Reality (iVR) technology has improved appreciably and affords a relatively straightforward methodology to investigate the role of context on learning, memory, and emotion while maintaining experimental control. Here, we review context conditioning literature in humans and describe challenges to study contextual learning in humans. We then provide details for a novel context threat (fear) conditioning paradigm in humans using a commercially available VR headset and a cross-platform game engine. This paradigm resulted in the acquisition of subjective threat, threat-conditioned defensive responses, and explicit threat memory. We make the paradigm publicly available and describe obstacles and solutions to optimize future studies of context conditioning using iVR. As computer technology advances to replicate the sensation of realistic environments, there are increasing opportunities to bridge the translational gap between rodent and human research on how context modulates cognition, which may ultimately lead to more optimal treatment strategies for anxiety- and stress-related disorders.

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Reinstatement of contextual anxiety in humans: Effects of state anxiety

Cited by 14 publications

References 52 publications

State anxiety modulates the return of fear

State anxiety modulates the return of fear

Pupil dilation as an implicit measure of appetitive Pavlovian learning

Context conditioning in humans using commercially available immersive Virtual Reality

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