A novel paradigm to study interpersonal threat-related learning and extinction in children using virtual reality

Abstract Disruptions in fear-extinction learning are centrally implicated in a range of stress-related disorders, including anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder. Given that these disorders frequently begin in childhood/adolescence, an understanding of fear-extinction learning in children is ess...

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Autores principales: Hilary A. Marusak, Craig A. Peters, Aneesh Hehr, Farrah Elrahal, Christine A. Rabinak
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2017
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/eba57d1b2aae4e9094fa4404695db159
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Sumario:Abstract Disruptions in fear-extinction learning are centrally implicated in a range of stress-related disorders, including anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder. Given that these disorders frequently begin in childhood/adolescence, an understanding of fear-extinction learning in children is essential for (1) detecting the source of developmental susceptibility, (2) identifying mechanisms leading to pathology, and (3) informing the development and/or more judicious application of treatments for youth. Here, we offer and validate a novel virtual reality paradigm to study threat-related learning and extinction in children that models real-world cues, environments, and fear-inducing events that children are likely to experience, and are linked to the development of fear- and stress-related pathologies. We found that our paradigm is well tolerated in children as young as 6 years, that children show intact fear and extinction learning, and show evidence of divergence in subjective, physiological, and behavioral measures of conditioned fear. The paradigm is available for use in 3-D and in 2-D (e.g., for the MRI scanner) upon request at www.tnp2lab.org .