Overgeneralization of Conditioned Fear as a Pathogenic Marker of Panic Disorder
Top Cited Papers
- 1 January 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Psychiatric Association Publishing in American Journal of Psychiatry
- Vol. 167 (1), 47-55
- https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09030410
Abstract
Objective Classical conditioning features prominently in many etiological accounts of panic disorder. According to such accounts, neutral conditioned stimuli present during panic attacks acquire panicogenic properties. Conditioned stimuli triggering panic symptoms are not limited to the original conditioned stimuli but are thought to generalize to stimuli resembling those co-occurring with panic, resulting in the proliferation of panic cues. The authors conducted a laboratory-based assessment of this potential correlate of panic disorder by testing the degree to which panic patients and healthy subjects manifest generalization of conditioned fear. Method Nineteen patients with a DSM-IV-TR diagnosis of panic disorder and 19 healthy comparison subjects were recruited for the study. The fear-generalization paradigm consisted of 10 rings of graded size presented on a computer monitor; one extreme size was a conditioned danger cue, the other extreme a conditioned safety cue, and the eight rings of intermediary size created a continuum of similarity from one extreme to the other. Generalization was assessed by conditioned fear potentiating of the startle blink reflex as measured with electromyography (EMG). Results Panic patients displayed stronger conditioned generalization than comparison subjects, as reflected by startle EMG. Conditioned fear in panic patients generalized to rings with up to three units of dissimilarity to the conditioned danger cue, whereas generalization in comparison subjects was restricted to rings with only one unit of dissimilarity. Conclusions The findings demonstrate a marked proclivity toward fear overgeneralization in panic disorder and provide a methodology for laboratory-based investigations of this central, yet understudied, conditioning correlate of panic. Given the putative molecular basis of fear conditioning, these results may have implications for novel treatments and prevention in panic disorder.Keywords
This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
- Impaired discriminative fear-conditioning resulting from elevated fear responding to learned safety cues among individuals with panic disorderBehaviour Research and Therapy, 2009
- Amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex activation during affective startle modulation: a PET study of fearEuropean Journal of Neuroscience, 2003
- A modern learning theory perspective on the etiology of panic disorder.Psychological Review, 2001
- Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 1999
- Stimulus generalization of fear responses: effects of auditory cortex lesions in a computational model and in ratsCerebral Cortex, 1997
- D-Cycloserine Causes Transient Enhancement of Memory for a Weak Aversive Stimulus in Day-Old Chicks (Gallus domesticus)Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 1996
- Fear‐Potentiated Startle in Humans: Effects of Anticipatory Anxiety on the Acoustic Blink ReflexPsychophysiology, 1991
- D-cycloserine, a positive modulator of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor, enhances performance of learning tasks in ratsPharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 1989
- Panic disorder: A product of classical conditioningBehaviour Research and Therapy, 1988
- Conditioned fear and startle magnitude: Effects of different footshock or backshock intensities used in training.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 1978