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Pain-relief learning in flies, rats, and man: basic research and applied perspectives

Memories relating to a painful, negative event are adaptive and can be stored for a lifetime to support preemptive avoidance, escape, or attack behavior. However, under unfavorable circumstances such memories can become overwhelmingly powerful. They may trigger excessively negative psychological sta...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gerber, Bertram, Yarali, Ayse, Diegelmann, Sören, Wotjak, Carsten T., Pauli, Paul, Fendt, Markus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3966540/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24643725
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/lm.032995.113
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author Gerber, Bertram
Yarali, Ayse
Diegelmann, Sören
Wotjak, Carsten T.
Pauli, Paul
Fendt, Markus
author_facet Gerber, Bertram
Yarali, Ayse
Diegelmann, Sören
Wotjak, Carsten T.
Pauli, Paul
Fendt, Markus
author_sort Gerber, Bertram
collection PubMed
description Memories relating to a painful, negative event are adaptive and can be stored for a lifetime to support preemptive avoidance, escape, or attack behavior. However, under unfavorable circumstances such memories can become overwhelmingly powerful. They may trigger excessively negative psychological states and uncontrollable avoidance of locations, objects, or social interactions. It is therefore obvious that any process to counteract such effects will be of value. In this context, we stress from a basic-research perspective that painful, negative events are “Janus-faced” in the sense that there are actually two aspects about them that are worth remembering: What made them happen and what made them cease. We review published findings from fruit flies, rats, and man showing that both aspects, respectively related to the onset and the offset of the negative event, induce distinct and oppositely valenced memories: Stimuli experienced before an electric shock acquire negative valence as they signal upcoming punishment, whereas stimuli experienced after an electric shock acquire positive valence because of their association with the relieving cessation of pain. We discuss how memories for such punishment- and relief-learning are organized, how this organization fits into the threat-imminence model of defensive behavior, and what perspectives these considerations offer for applied psychology in the context of trauma, panic, and nonsuicidal self-injury.
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spelling pubmed-39665402014-04-09 Pain-relief learning in flies, rats, and man: basic research and applied perspectives Gerber, Bertram Yarali, Ayse Diegelmann, Sören Wotjak, Carsten T. Pauli, Paul Fendt, Markus Learn Mem Review Memories relating to a painful, negative event are adaptive and can be stored for a lifetime to support preemptive avoidance, escape, or attack behavior. However, under unfavorable circumstances such memories can become overwhelmingly powerful. They may trigger excessively negative psychological states and uncontrollable avoidance of locations, objects, or social interactions. It is therefore obvious that any process to counteract such effects will be of value. In this context, we stress from a basic-research perspective that painful, negative events are “Janus-faced” in the sense that there are actually two aspects about them that are worth remembering: What made them happen and what made them cease. We review published findings from fruit flies, rats, and man showing that both aspects, respectively related to the onset and the offset of the negative event, induce distinct and oppositely valenced memories: Stimuli experienced before an electric shock acquire negative valence as they signal upcoming punishment, whereas stimuli experienced after an electric shock acquire positive valence because of their association with the relieving cessation of pain. We discuss how memories for such punishment- and relief-learning are organized, how this organization fits into the threat-imminence model of defensive behavior, and what perspectives these considerations offer for applied psychology in the context of trauma, panic, and nonsuicidal self-injury. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 2014-04 /pmc/articles/PMC3966540/ /pubmed/24643725 http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/lm.032995.113 Text en © 2014 Gerber et al.; Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article, published in Learning & Memory, is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
spellingShingle Review
Gerber, Bertram
Yarali, Ayse
Diegelmann, Sören
Wotjak, Carsten T.
Pauli, Paul
Fendt, Markus
Pain-relief learning in flies, rats, and man: basic research and applied perspectives
title Pain-relief learning in flies, rats, and man: basic research and applied perspectives
title_full Pain-relief learning in flies, rats, and man: basic research and applied perspectives
title_fullStr Pain-relief learning in flies, rats, and man: basic research and applied perspectives
title_full_unstemmed Pain-relief learning in flies, rats, and man: basic research and applied perspectives
title_short Pain-relief learning in flies, rats, and man: basic research and applied perspectives
title_sort pain-relief learning in flies, rats, and man: basic research and applied perspectives
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3966540/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24643725
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/lm.032995.113
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