Extinction learning is slower, weaker and less context specific after alcohol.
Extinction learning is slower, weaker and less context specific after alcohol.
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DOI：
10.1016/j.nlm.2015.07.014
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发表时间：
2015-11
影响因子：
2.7
通讯作者：
Burgess N
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bisby JA;King JA;Sulpizio V;Degeilh F;Valerie Curran H;Burgess N
酒精经常与心理创伤有关，通常被个人用来减轻恐惧和焦虑。我们研究了酒精对虚拟环境中恐惧获得和消除的影响。健康志愿者被给予酒精（0.4克/公斤）或安慰剂，并从虚拟庭院的不同角度进行获取和熄灭，其中条件刺激与轻度电击配对位于中心。第二天，参与者返回测试恐惧回忆从庭院的两个角度。皮肤电导反应被记录为条件性恐惧的指数。成功的恐惧收购酒精对比与受损的消退学习证明了持续的条件反射（实验1）。当从另一个角度进行测试时，参与者在酒精下的消退障碍与从一个角度看到的庭院中的物体位置记忆障碍相关。酒精引起的灭绝障碍，克服了灭绝试验（实验2）的数量增加。然而，第二天的恐惧回忆测试显示，酒精组在两种观点上都存在持续的恐惧。因此，酒精损害灭绝，而不是收购的恐惧，这表明灭绝是更依赖于酒精敏感的空间环境的表征比收购。总的来说，酒精下的灭绝学习速度更慢，更弱，更少的上下文特定性，导致在测试中持续的恐惧，推广到灭绝的观点。对消退的选择性影响表明酒精对前额叶参与的影响，而减少的上下文特异性则涉及海马体。这些发现对临床焦虑症患者使用酒精具有重要意义。
Alcohol is frequently involved in psychological trauma and often used by individuals to reduce fear and anxiety. We examined the effects of alcohol on fear acquisition and extinction within a virtual environment. Healthy volunteers were administered alcohol (0.4 g/kg) or placebo and underwent acquisition and extinction from different viewpoints of a virtual courtyard, in which the conditioned stimulus, paired with a mild electric shock, was centrally located. Participants returned the following day to test fear recall from both viewpoints of the courtyard. Skin conductance responses were recorded as an index of conditioned fear. Successful fear acquisition under alcohol contrasted with impaired extinction learning evidenced by persistent conditioned responses (Experiment 1). Participants’ impairments in extinction under alcohol correlated with impairments in remembering object-locations in the courtyard seen from one viewpoint when tested from the other viewpoint. Alcohol-induced extinction impairments were overcome by increasing the number of extinction trials (Experiment 2). However, a test of fear recall the next day showed persistent fear in the alcohol group across both viewpoints. Thus, alcohol impaired extinction rather than acquisition of fear, suggesting that extinction is more dependent than acquisition on alcohol-sensitive representations of spatial context. Overall, extinction learning under alcohol was slower, weaker and less context-specific, resulting in persistent fear at test that generalized to the extinction viewpoint. The selective effect on extinction suggests an effect of alcohol on prefrontal involvement, while the reduced context-specificity implicates the hippocampus. These findings have important implications for the use of alcohol by individuals with clinical anxiety disorders.