Replication study on the role of dopamine-dependent prefrontal reactivations in human extinction memory retrieval.

Even after successful extinction, conditioned fear can return. Strengthening the consolidation of the fear-inhibitory safety memory formed during extinction is one way to counteract return of fear. In a previous study, we found that post-extinction L-DOPA administration improved extinction memory retrieval 24 h later.

Do your troubles today seem further away than yesterday? On sleep's role in mitigating the blushing response to a reactivated embarrassing episode.

The "sleep to forget and sleep to remember hypothesis" proposes that sleep weakens the emotional tone of an experience while preserving or even enhancing its content. Prior experimental research however shows contradictory findings on how emotional reactivity changes after a period of sleep, likely explained by methodological variations. By addressing these inconsistencies, we investigated the mitigating effect of overnight sleep on emotional reactivity triggered by memory reactivation.

Pupil dilation and skin conductance as measures of prediction error in aversive learning.

Notwithstanding the success of CBT, it is relatively unknown how individuals can better profit from corrective learning experiences. Various theories postulate that prediction errors - the difference between what is occurring and what is expected - are the driving force of associative (re)learning. While prediction errors are typically operationalized as violations of cognitive outcome expectancies, direct physiological indices of prediction errors could capture potentially more essential automatic and emotional processes in associative learning.

Multiverse analyses in fear conditioning research.

There is heterogeneity in and a lack of consensus on the preferred statistical analyses in light of a multitude of potentially equally justifiable approaches. Here, we introduce multiverse analysis for the field of experimental psychopathology research. We present a model multiverse approach tailored to fear conditioning research and, as a secondary aim, introduce the R package 'multifear' that allows to run all the models though a single line of code.

In search of the behavioral effects of fear: A paradigm to assess conditioned suppression in humans.

Conditioned fear can substantially reduce the likelihood that an individual will engage in reward-related behavior--a phenomenon coined conditioned suppression. Despite the unmistakable relevance of conditioned suppression for excessive fears and their adverse consequences, the phenomenon has primarily been observed in animal models and is not yet well understood. Here, we aimed to develop a conditioned suppression paradigm that enables a robust quantification of the effect of Pavlovian fear on subsequent reward-related behavior in humans and assess its potential relation to physiological measures of fear.

Navigating the manyverse of skin conductance response quantification approaches - A direct comparison of trough-to-peak, baseline correction, and model-based approaches in Ledalab and PsPM.

Raw data are typically required to be processed to be ready for statistical analyses, and processing pipelines are often characterized by substantial heterogeneity. Here, we applied seven different approaches (trough-to-peak scoring by two different raters, script-based baseline correction, Ledalab as well as four different models implemented in the software PsPM) to two fear conditioning data sets. Selection of the approaches included was guided by a systematic literature search by using fear conditioning research as a case example.

Navigating the garden of forking paths for data exclusions in fear conditioning research.

In this report, we illustrate the considerable impact of researcher degrees of freedom with respect to exclusion of participants in paradigms with a learning element. We illustrate this empirically through case examples from human fear conditioning research, in which the exclusion of 'non-learners' and 'non-responders' is common - despite a lack of consensus on how to define these groups. We illustrate the substantial heterogeneity in exclusion criteria identified in a systematic literature search and highlight the potential problems and pitfalls of different definitions through case examples based on re-analyses of existing data sets.

Increased Neural Activity in Mesostriatal Regions after Prefrontal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation and l-DOPA Administration.

Dopamine dysfunction is associated with a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders commonly treated pharmacologically or invasively. Recent studies provide evidence for a nonpharmacological and noninvasive alternative that allows similar manipulation of the dopaminergic system: transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In rodents, tDCS has been shown to increase neural activity in subcortical parts of the dopaminergic system, and recent studies in humans provide evidence that tDCS over prefrontal regions induces striatal dopamine release and affects reward-related behavior.

A Dopaminergic Basis for Fear Extinction.

It is a joyous relief when an event we dread fails to materialize. In fear extinction, the appetitive nature of an omitted aversive event is not a mere epiphenomenon but drives the reduction of fear responses and the formation of long-term extinction memories. Dopamine emerges as key neurobiological mediator of these related processes.

Population-based validation of a German version of the Brief Resilience Scale.

Smith and colleagues developed the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) to assess the individual ability to recover from stress despite significant adversity. This study aimed to validate the German version of the BRS. We used data from a population-based (sample 1: n = 1.

Making a mountain out of a molehill: on the role of the rostral dorsal anterior cingulate and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in conscious threat appraisal, catastrophizing, and worrying.

According to appraisal theories fear and anxiety are elicited by the subjective evaluation of a situation or internal state as threatening. From this perspective anxiety disorders result from maladaptive, exaggerated threat appraisals that over-estimate the threatening consequences of often innocuous stimuli and situations. When these threat over-estimations occur at the level of conscious processing, they are referred to as catastrophizing and worrying.

Emotional facial expressions reduce neural adaptation to face identity.

In human social interactions, facial emotional expressions are a crucial source of information. Repeatedly presented information typically leads to an adaptation of neural responses. However, processing seems sustained with emotional facial expressions.