Young and old Pavlovian fear memories can be modified with extinction training during reconsolidation in humans
- Elisa C.K. Steinfurth1,2,
- Jonathan W. Kanen1,
- Candace M. Raio1,
- Roger L. Clem3,
- Richard L. Huganir4 and
- Elizabeth A. Phelps1,5,6,7
- 1Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA
- 2Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, University of Greifswald, Greifswald 17487, Germany
- 3Departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, New York, New York 10029, USA
- 4Department of Neuroscience, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA
- 5Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA
- 6Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, New York 10962, USA
Abstract
Extinction training during reconsolidation has been shown to persistently diminish conditioned fear responses across species. We investigated in humans if older fear memories can benefit similarly. Using a Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm we compared standard extinction and extinction after memory reactivation 1 d or 7 d following acquisition. Participants who underwent extinction during reconsolidation showed no evidence of fear recovery, whereas fear responses returned in participants who underwent standard extinction. We observed this effect in young and old fear memories. Extending the beneficial use of reconsolidation to older fear memories in humans is promising for therapeutic applications.
Footnotes
-
↵7 Corresponding author
E-mail liz.phelps{at}nyu.edu
-
Article is online at http://www.learnmem.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/lm.033589.113.
-
Freely available online through the Learning & Memory Open Access option.
-
[Supplemental material is available for this article.]
- Received October 15, 2013.
- Accepted March 30, 2014.
This article, published in Learning & Memory, is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
