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Editorial
. 2024 Apr 15:13:e97633.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.97633.

Enhancing fear extinction

Sydney Trask  1   2 , Nicole C Ferrara  3   4
Affiliations
Editorial

Enhancing fear extinction

Sydney Trask et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Gradually reducing a source of fear during extinction treatments may weaken negative memories in the long term.

Keywords: extinction; memory; neuroscience; prediction error; rat.

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Conflict of interest statement

ST, NF No competing interests declared

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Comparison of standard versus gradual extinction protocols.
Kennedy et al. tested two different extinction procedures that reduce learned fear in rats following a classical fear conditioning protocol. The standard or traditional group (right) was exposed to a conditional stimulus (tone) only, without receiving any further electric shocks, while the gradual group (left) received a tone followed by electric shocks of a gradually reducedvoltage. In the traditional group, the fear response was initially reduced (white bar) but increased again during relapse (blue bar); this occurred regardless of whether the environmental conditions were the same (marked as no) or different (marked as yes) between extinction and conditioning. However, gradual extinction reduced relapse, but only when the environmental conditions between conditioning and extinction remained similar.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

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