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Examining Differences in Fear Learning in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder With Pupillometry, Startle Electromyography and Skin Conductance Responses

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by recurrent, persistent thoughts and repetitive behaviors causing stress and anxiety. In the associative learning model of OCD, mechanisms of fear extinction are supposed to partly underlie symptom development, maintenance and treatment of OCD, p...

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Autores principales: Pöhlchen, Dorothee, Priouret, Marthe, Kraft, Miriam S., Binder, Florian P., Gürsel, Deniz A., Berberich, Götz, Koch, Kathrin, Spoormaker, Victor I.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8517251/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34658966
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.730742
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author Pöhlchen, Dorothee
Priouret, Marthe
Kraft, Miriam S.
Binder, Florian P.
Gürsel, Deniz A.
Berberich, Götz
Koch, Kathrin
Spoormaker, Victor I.
author_facet Pöhlchen, Dorothee
Priouret, Marthe
Kraft, Miriam S.
Binder, Florian P.
Gürsel, Deniz A.
Berberich, Götz
Koch, Kathrin
Spoormaker, Victor I.
author_sort Pöhlchen, Dorothee
collection PubMed
description Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by recurrent, persistent thoughts and repetitive behaviors causing stress and anxiety. In the associative learning model of OCD, mechanisms of fear extinction are supposed to partly underlie symptom development, maintenance and treatment of OCD, proposing that OCD patients suffer from rigid memory associations and inhibitory learning deficits. To test these assumptions, previous studies have used skin conductance and subjective ratings as readouts in fear conditioning paradigms, finding impaired fear extinction learning, impaired fear extinction recall or no differences between individuals with OCD and healthy controls. Against this heterogeneous background, we tested fear acquisition and extinction in 37 OCD patients and 56 healthy controls, employing skin conductance as well as pupillometry and startle electromyography. Extinction recall was also included in a subsample. We did not observe differences between groups in any of the task phases, except a trend toward higher startle amplitudes during extinction for OCD. Overall, sensitive readouts such as pupillometry and startle responses did not provide evidence for moderate-to-large inhibitory learning deficits using classical fear conditioning, challenging the assumption of generically impaired extinction learning and memory in OCD.
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spelling pubmed-85172512021-10-16 Examining Differences in Fear Learning in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder With Pupillometry, Startle Electromyography and Skin Conductance Responses Pöhlchen, Dorothee Priouret, Marthe Kraft, Miriam S. Binder, Florian P. Gürsel, Deniz A. Berberich, Götz Koch, Kathrin Spoormaker, Victor I. Front Psychiatry Psychiatry Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by recurrent, persistent thoughts and repetitive behaviors causing stress and anxiety. In the associative learning model of OCD, mechanisms of fear extinction are supposed to partly underlie symptom development, maintenance and treatment of OCD, proposing that OCD patients suffer from rigid memory associations and inhibitory learning deficits. To test these assumptions, previous studies have used skin conductance and subjective ratings as readouts in fear conditioning paradigms, finding impaired fear extinction learning, impaired fear extinction recall or no differences between individuals with OCD and healthy controls. Against this heterogeneous background, we tested fear acquisition and extinction in 37 OCD patients and 56 healthy controls, employing skin conductance as well as pupillometry and startle electromyography. Extinction recall was also included in a subsample. We did not observe differences between groups in any of the task phases, except a trend toward higher startle amplitudes during extinction for OCD. Overall, sensitive readouts such as pupillometry and startle responses did not provide evidence for moderate-to-large inhibitory learning deficits using classical fear conditioning, challenging the assumption of generically impaired extinction learning and memory in OCD. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-10-01 /pmc/articles/PMC8517251/ /pubmed/34658966 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.730742 Text en Copyright © 2021 Pöhlchen, Priouret, Kraft, Binder, Gürsel, Berberich, BeCOME working group, Koch and Spoormaker. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychiatry
Pöhlchen, Dorothee
Priouret, Marthe
Kraft, Miriam S.
Binder, Florian P.
Gürsel, Deniz A.
Berberich, Götz
Koch, Kathrin
Spoormaker, Victor I.
Examining Differences in Fear Learning in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder With Pupillometry, Startle Electromyography and Skin Conductance Responses
title Examining Differences in Fear Learning in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder With Pupillometry, Startle Electromyography and Skin Conductance Responses
title_full Examining Differences in Fear Learning in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder With Pupillometry, Startle Electromyography and Skin Conductance Responses
title_fullStr Examining Differences in Fear Learning in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder With Pupillometry, Startle Electromyography and Skin Conductance Responses
title_full_unstemmed Examining Differences in Fear Learning in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder With Pupillometry, Startle Electromyography and Skin Conductance Responses
title_short Examining Differences in Fear Learning in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder With Pupillometry, Startle Electromyography and Skin Conductance Responses
title_sort examining differences in fear learning in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder with pupillometry, startle electromyography and skin conductance responses
topic Psychiatry
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8517251/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34658966
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.730742
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