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Fear extinction is the fundamental principle behind exposure therapy, a common treatment for anxiety disorders. In this process, the conditioned fear responses diminish progressively over time, when the previously conditioned stimulus is presented without being paired with the unconditioned stimulus. [ 20 ]
In rats, the fear-motivated response is to freeze, so in both fear extinction and avoidance conditioning inhibition of the amygdala via the mPFC leads to more movement (shuttling) and less freezing. The basolateral region of the amygdala is implicated in extinction of fear behaviors and expression of avoidance behaviors; [ 2 ] [ 3 ] however ...
Fear-potentiated startle (FPS) is a reflexive physiological reaction to a presented stimulus, and is an indicator of the fear reaction in an organism. The FPS response can be elicited in the face of any threatening stimulus (e.g., any object, person or situation that would cause someone to experience feelings of fear), but it can also be elicited by a neutral stimulus as a result of fear ...
Pavlovian fear conditioning is a behavioral paradigm in which organisms learn to predict aversive events. [1] It is a form of learning in which an aversive stimulus (e.g. an electrical shock) is associated with a particular neutral context (e.g., a room) or neutral stimulus (e.g., a tone), resulting in the expression of fear responses to the originally neutral stimulus or context.
Norepinephrine is a huge player in fear memory formation. Recent studies have demonstrated that the blockade of norepinephrine β-adrenergic receptors (β-ARs) in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala interferes with the acquisition of fear learning when given pretraining stimuli but has no effect when applied posttraining or before memory retrieval.
Furthermore, if there is a traumatic incident that is associated to a memory, and that becomes suppressed, the amygdala is responsible for this fear conditioning. The amygdala leads to the caudate nucleus in the neocortex of the basal ganglia, so the fear response can also be triggered via spontaneous recovery. Basically, the stronger the ...
Exposure therapy is based on the principle of respondent conditioning often termed Pavlovian extinction. [10] The exposure therapist identifies the cognitions, emotions and physiological arousal that accompany a fear-inducing stimulus and then tries to break the pattern of escape that maintains the fear.
From the cognitive psychology perspective, cognitions and feelings precede behavior, so it initially uses cognitive restructuring. The goal of the therapy is for the individual to learn how to cope with and overcome their fear in each level of an exposure hierarchy. The process of systematic desensitization occurs in three steps.