Don't fear 'fear conditioning': Methodological considerations for the design and analysis of studies on human fear acquisition, extinction, and return of fear

TL;DR: Overall, the extant literature supports a key role of aversive associative learning in the development and treatment of anxiety disorders, however, research targeting specific mechanisms such as extinction generalization and avoidance, the fragility of extinction, and moderating influences of individual differences pertinent to anxiety disorders is needed.

TL;DR: This work for the first time presents a comprehensive literature overview and methodological discussion on inter-individual differences in fear acquisition, extinction and return of fear, and identifies methodological pitfalls and provides suggestions for study design and analyses tailored to individual difference research in fear conditioning.

TL;DR: It is illustrated how flexibility in data collection and analysis can be avoided, which will benefit the robustness and replicability of research findings and can be expected to be applicable to other fields of research that involve a learning element.

TL;DR: It is argued that the BNST is involved in organizing fear responses to stimuli that poorly predict when danger will occur, no matter the duration, modality, or complexity of those stimuli.

TL;DR: A method for recording saccadic and pursuit eye movements in the magnetic resonance tomograph designed for visual functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments yields high temporal and spatial resolution of the horizontal component of eye movements during fMRI scanning.

TL;DR: The prevalence of multiple anxiety disorder comorbidity was characterized by reanalyzing national survey data, then an English-language PubMed search of studies analyzing the impact of exclusion criteria on treatment outcome data suggested a consistent relationship between the number ofclusion criteria and the effect size of treatment outcomes.

TL;DR: It is suggested that the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) and the lateral division of the bed nucleus ofThe stria terminalis (BNSTL) are involved in short-term versus long-term fear responses the authors call phasic versus sustained fear, respectively.

TL;DR: Safety signals are learned cues that predict the nonoccurrence of an aversive event, and are potent inhibitors of fear and stress responses as discussed by the authors. But they do not predict the occurrence of aversive events.