Neural correlates of trait anxiety in fear extinction

• Published in: Psychological medicine Vol. 41; no. 4; pp. 789 - 798
• Main Authors: Sehlmeyer, C., Dannlowski, U., Schöning, S., Kugel, H., Pyka, M., Pfleiderer, B., Zwitserlood, P., Schiffbauer, H., Heindel, W., Arolt, V., Konrad, C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.04.2011
• Subjects: Adult; Affectivity. Emotion; Amygdala - physiopathology; Anxiety; Anxiety - physiopathology; Anxiety - psychology; Arousal - physiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain; Brain Mapping; Conditioning; Conditioning, Classical - physiology; Cortex; Extinction; Extinction, Psychological - physiology; Fear; Fear & phobias; Fear - physiology; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Gyrus Cinguli - physiopathology; Human; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Learning. Memory; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Nerve Net - physiopathology; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Oxygen - blood; Personality Inventory; Personality. Affectivity; Prefrontal Cortex - physiopathology; Psychological extinction; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Temperament - physiology; Trait anxiety; Young Adult; ACC; amygdala; extinction; trait anxiety; conditioning; fear; Human; Affect affectivity; Amygdala; Healthy subject; Extinction; Central nervous system; Basal ganglion; Emotion emotionality; Personality; Experimental study; Metabolism; Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging; Encephalon; Fear; Young adult; Anxiety; Conditioning; Amygdaloid nucleus; Functional imaging

Fear conditioning involves the amygdala as the main neural structure for learning fear responses whereas fear extinction mainly activates the inhibitory prefrontal cortex (PFC). In this study we investigated whether individual differences in trait anxiety affect amygdala and dorsal anterior cingulat...