Anxiogenic effects of repeated administrations of 20% CO2-enriched air: stability within sessions and habituation across time

Increasingly carbon dioxide-enriched air is being used as an aversive unconditioned stimulus in laboratory examinations of anxiety. Yet, little is known about the stability of the autonomic and subjective effects of this stimulus across repeated inhalations and sessions. We examined whether repeated...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry Vol. 31; no. 2; pp. 103 - 121
Main Authors FORSYTH, John P, LEJUEZ, C. W, FINLAY, Carlos
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Elsevier 01.06.2000
Subjects
Adolescent
Adult
Arousal - drug effects
Autonomic Nervous System - drug effects
Behavior therapy. Cognitive therapy
Biological and medical sciences
Carbon Dioxide - pharmacology
Conditioning, Classical
Female
Galvanic Skin Response - drug effects
Habituation, Psychophysiologic - drug effects
Heart Rate - drug effects
Humans
Male
Medical sciences
Panic - drug effects
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Treatments
Human
Heart rate
Panic
Treatment
Anxiety disorder
Carbon dioxide
Electrodermography
Electrophysiology
Exposure
Behavior therapy
Hemodynamics
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Summary:Increasingly carbon dioxide-enriched air is being used as an aversive unconditioned stimulus in laboratory examinations of anxiety. Yet, little is known about the stability of the autonomic and subjective effects of this stimulus across repeated inhalations and sessions. We examined whether repeated administrations of high concentrations of CO2-enriched air produced either habituation, stability, or sensitization across several autonomic and self-report indices within one session (Experiment 1) and then several sessions (Experiment 2) of exposure. Results suggest that non-clinical participants do not habituate to CO2 within sessions, but do show habituation on cardiac and subjective report of anxiety across sessions. Individual difference factors such as anxiety sensitivity and suffocation fear seem to moderate some of these effects, including self-reported distress and anxiety in response to the challenge. These results support the use of CO2 as a panicogenic aversive stimulus in laboratory models of fear onset and in clinical settings for interoceptive exposure treatments of panic.
ISSN:0005-7916
1873-7943
DOI:10.1016/S0005-7916(00)00014-8