Manipulating expectancy violations to strengthen the efficacy of human fear extinction.

Recent theoretical and clinical articles have emphasized a role for expectancy violations in improving the effectiveness of exposure therapy. Expectancy violations are critical to extinction learning and strengthening these violations has been suggested to improve the formation and retention of extinction memories, which should result in lasting symptom reductions after treatment. However, more detailed mechanistic insights in this process are needed to better inform clinical interventions.

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.

Demarcating the boundary conditions of memory reconsolidation: An unsuccessful replication.

Disrupting memory reconsolidation provides an opportunity to abruptly reduce the behavioural expression of fear memories with long-lasting effects. The success of a reconsolidation intervention is, however, not guaranteed as it strongly depends on the destabilization of the memory. Identifying the necessary conditions to trigger destabilization remains one of the critical challenges in the field.

Long-term behavioural rewriting of maladaptive drinking memories reconsolidation-update mechanisms.

Background: Alcohol use disorders can be conceptualised as a learned pattern of maladaptive alcohol-consumption behaviours. The memories encoding these behaviours centrally contribute to long-term excessive alcohol consumption and are therefore an important therapeutic target. The transient period of memory instability sparked during memory reconsolidation offers a therapeutic window to directly these memories using targeted behavioural interventions.