Induction of conditioned avoidance via mental imagery.

There is a growing interest on how mental imagery may be involved in the onset and maintenance of anxiety-related disorders. Here, we used an experimental design to investigate whether a key symptom across anxiety-related disorders, namely avoidance, can be induced via mental imagery. Healthy participants first learned that one neutral stimulus (A) was associated with a mild electric shock and two other neutral stimuli (B and C) were not.

Side effects of induced lateral eye movements during aversive ideation.

Background And Objectives: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder. It uses a dual-task approach, in which patients recall an aversive memory while making lateral eye movements. Research has shown that this 'eye movements' intervention reduces subjective memory vividness and emotionality.

Secondary extinction reduces reinstatement of threat expectancy and conditioned skin conductance responses in human fear conditioning.

Background And Objectives: Secondary extinction refers to the phenomenon that extinction of one conditioned stimulus (CS) results in the reduction of conditioned responses for other CSs conditioned with the same unconditioned stimulus (US). Previous research with rats has demonstrated that secondary extinction can interfere with the return of conditioned fear after a reinstatement manipulation. Here we investigated this phenomenon in two pre-registered studies in humans.

Generalisation of threat expectancy increases with time.

Excessive fear generalisation is a feature characteristic of clinical anxiety and has been linked to its aetiology. Previous animal studies have shown that the mere passage of time increases fear generalisation and that brief exposure to training cues prior to long-term testing reverses this effect. The current study examined these phenomena in humans.

Beyond Extinction: Prolonged Conditioning and Repeated Threat Exposure Abolish Contextual Renewal of Fear-Potentiated Startle Discrimination but Leave Expectancy Ratings Intact.

Extinction treatments decrease fear via repeated exposures to the conditioned stimulus (CS) and are associated with a return of fear. Alternatively, fear can be reduced via reductions in the perceived intensity of the unconditioned stimulus (US), e.g.

Eye movement during recall reduces objective memory performance: An extended replication.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder involves making eye movements (EMs) during recall of a traumatic image. Experimental studies have shown that the dual task decreases self-reported memory vividness and emotionality. However valuable, these data are prone to demand effects and little can be inferred about the mechanism(s) underlying the observed effects.

Countering fear renewal: changes in the UCS representation generalize across contexts.

After treatment of anxiety disorders, fear often returns. Analogue studies show that outside the extinction context the conditional stimulus (CS) activates the acquisition memory (CS predicts unconditional stimulus; UCS), rather than the extinction memory (CS does not predict UCS). Conditioning theory postulates that fear also diminishes after a reduction in the subjective cost of the UCS, which can occur in absence of any changes in the CS-UCS association.

Shaking that icky feeling: effects of extinction and counterconditioning on disgust-related evaluative learning.

Learned disgust appears to play an important role in certain anxiety disorders, and can be explained by the process of evaluative conditioning, in which an affective evaluative reaction evoked by an unconditional stimulus (US) is transferred to a conditional stimulus (CS). Much remains unknown about how disgust-related evaluative learning can be effectively eliminated. Study 1 of the present investigation examined the effects of extinction on reducing the negative evaluation of a CS that was acquired during disgust conditioning.

How eye movements in EMDR work: changes in memory vividness and emotionality.

Background And Objectives: Eye movements (EM) during recall of an aversive memory is a treatment element unique to Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Experimental studies have shown that EM reduce memory vividness and/or emotionality shortly after the intervention. However, it is unclear whether the immediate effects of the intervention reflect actual changes in memory.

Impaired fear inhibition learning predicts the persistence of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Recent cross-sectional studies have shown that the inability to suppress fear under safe conditions is a key problem in people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The current longitudinal study examined whether individual differences in fear inhibition predict the persistence of PTSD symptoms. Approximately 2 months after deployment to Afghanistan, 144 trauma-exposed Dutch soldiers were administered a conditional discrimination task (AX+/BX-).

Eye movements during recall of aversive memory decreases conditioned fear.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders typically involves exposure to the conditioned stimulus (CS). Despite its status as an effective and primary treatment, many patients do not show clinical improvement or relapse. Contemporary learning theory suggests that treatment may be optimized by adding techniques that aim at revaluating the aversive consequence (US) of the feared stimulus.

EMDR and mindfulness. Eye movements and attentional breathing tax working memory and reduce vividness and emotionality of aversive ideation.

Background And Objectives: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) are effective in reducing the subjective impact of negative ideation. In both treatments, patients are encouraged to engage in a dual-task (eye movements (EM) in the case of EMDR and attentional breathing (AB) in the case of MBCT) while they experience negative thoughts or images. Working memory theory explains the effects of EM by suggesting that it taxes limited working memory resources, thus rendering the image less vivid and emotional.

Odors eliciting fear: a conditioning approach to Idiopathic Environmental Intolerances.

Patients suffering from Idiopathic Environmental Intolerances (IEI) report health symptoms, referable to multiple organ systems, which are triggered by harmless odors and therefore medically unexplainable. In line with previous research that predominantly points towards psychological explanations, the present study tests the hypothesis that IEI symptoms result from learning via classical conditioning of odors to fear. A differential conditioning paradigm was employed.

EMDR: eye movements superior to beeps in taxing working memory and reducing vividness of recollections.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is effectively treated with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) with patients making eye movements during recall of traumatic memories. Many therapists have replaced eye movements with bilateral beeps, but there are no data on the effects of beeps. Experimental studies suggest that eye movements may be beneficial because they tax working memory, especially the central executive component, but the presence/degree of taxation has not been assessed directly.