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Dissociable neural signatures of passive extinction and instrumental control over threatening events

Aberrant fear learning processes are assumed to be a key factor in the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders. Thus, effective behavioral interventions to reduce dysfunctional fear responding are needed. Beyond passive extinction learning, instrumental control over threatening events is thought to dimini...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wanke, Nadine, Schwabe, Lars
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7393280/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32507874
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa074
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author Wanke, Nadine
Schwabe, Lars
author_facet Wanke, Nadine
Schwabe, Lars
author_sort Wanke, Nadine
collection PubMed
description Aberrant fear learning processes are assumed to be a key factor in the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders. Thus, effective behavioral interventions to reduce dysfunctional fear responding are needed. Beyond passive extinction learning, instrumental control over threatening events is thought to diminish fear. However, the neural mechanisms underlying instrumental control—and to what extent these differ from extinction—are not well understood. We therefore contrasted the neural signatures of instrumental control and passive extinction using an aversive learning task, relative to a control condition. Participants (n = 64) could either learn to exert instrumental control over electric shocks, received a yoked number and sequence of shocks without instrumental control or did not receive any shocks. While both passive extinction and instrumental control reduced threat-related skin conductance responses (SCRs) relative to pre-extinction/control, instrumental control resulted in a significantly more pronounced decrease of SCRs. Instrumental control was further linked to decreased striatal activation and increased cross talk of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) with the amygdala, whereas passive extinction was associated with increased vmPFC activation. Our findings demonstrate that instrumental learning processes may shape Pavlovian fear responses and that the neural underpinnings of instrumental control are critically distinct from those of passive extinction learning.
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spelling pubmed-73932802020-08-04 Dissociable neural signatures of passive extinction and instrumental control over threatening events Wanke, Nadine Schwabe, Lars Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci Original Manuscript Aberrant fear learning processes are assumed to be a key factor in the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders. Thus, effective behavioral interventions to reduce dysfunctional fear responding are needed. Beyond passive extinction learning, instrumental control over threatening events is thought to diminish fear. However, the neural mechanisms underlying instrumental control—and to what extent these differ from extinction—are not well understood. We therefore contrasted the neural signatures of instrumental control and passive extinction using an aversive learning task, relative to a control condition. Participants (n = 64) could either learn to exert instrumental control over electric shocks, received a yoked number and sequence of shocks without instrumental control or did not receive any shocks. While both passive extinction and instrumental control reduced threat-related skin conductance responses (SCRs) relative to pre-extinction/control, instrumental control resulted in a significantly more pronounced decrease of SCRs. Instrumental control was further linked to decreased striatal activation and increased cross talk of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) with the amygdala, whereas passive extinction was associated with increased vmPFC activation. Our findings demonstrate that instrumental learning processes may shape Pavlovian fear responses and that the neural underpinnings of instrumental control are critically distinct from those of passive extinction learning. Oxford University Press 2020-06-08 /pmc/articles/PMC7393280/ /pubmed/32507874 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa074 Text en © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Original Manuscript
Wanke, Nadine
Schwabe, Lars
Dissociable neural signatures of passive extinction and instrumental control over threatening events
title Dissociable neural signatures of passive extinction and instrumental control over threatening events
title_full Dissociable neural signatures of passive extinction and instrumental control over threatening events
title_fullStr Dissociable neural signatures of passive extinction and instrumental control over threatening events
title_full_unstemmed Dissociable neural signatures of passive extinction and instrumental control over threatening events
title_short Dissociable neural signatures of passive extinction and instrumental control over threatening events
title_sort dissociable neural signatures of passive extinction and instrumental control over threatening events
topic Original Manuscript
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7393280/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32507874
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa074
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