High trait anxiety blocks olfactory plasticity induced by aversive learning.
Biol Psychol
; 170: 108324, 2022 04.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35346792
ABSTRACT
Aversive learning normally induces alterations in sensory function as the brain's sensory systems are tuned to optimize detection and discrimination of threat-predictive stimuli. Anxiety disorders can disrupt behavioral discrimination between threat-predictive and neutral stimuli, resulting in overgeneralization of negative affective responses to non-threatening situations. We thus hypothesized that anxiety could disrupt learning-induced improvement in sensory discrimination. We tested perceptual discrimination between similar odorants before and after discriminative aversive conditioning. Participants exhibiting normal levels of trait anxiety developed a larger skin conductance response (SCR) to the shock-predictive odorant and substantial improvement in their perceptual discrimination between the two odors. Repeated exposure to the odors without shock partially extinguished the SCRs but the perceptual effect persisted. By contrast, participants with high levels of trait anxiety developed comparably sized SCRs to both odors and displayed no perceptual improvement. Learning-induced perceptual plasticity can thus be impaired in people with high levels of trait anxiety.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Ansiedad
/
Miedo
Límite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Biol Psychol
Año:
2022
Tipo del documento:
Article