Context conditioning in virtual reality as a model for pathological anxiety

e-Neuroforum - Tập 19 Số 3 - Trang 63-70 - 2013
Evelyn Glotzbach-Schoon1, Marta Andreatta2, Andreas Mühlberger3, Paul Pauli1
1Department of Psychology I, Biological Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Psychotherapy, University of Würzburg Marcusstr. 9–11, 97070 Würzburg, Germany
2Department of Psychology I, Biological Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Psychotherapy, University of Würzburg Marcusstr. 9–11, 97070 Würzburg, Germany Dr. M. Andreatta
3Department of Clinical Psychology, and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg Universitätsstr. 31, 93053 Regensburg, Germany

Tóm tắt

Abstract Phobic fear which is triggered by specif­ic stimuli can be modeled experimentally through cue conditioning. In contrast, con­text conditioning may serve as a model for anxiety which is longer lasting and unrelat­ed to cues. Such context conditioning can be studied in humans in analogy to animal stud­ies by using virtual reality (VR). Our VR con­text conditioning paradigm uses virtual offic­es as contexts. One office becomes the anxi­ety context since participants receive unpre­dictable mildly painful electric stimulations. The other office becomes the safety context because no aversive stimulation is delivered while participants explore this office. The va­lidity of the paradigm is indicated in the find­ings that after conditioning participants rate the virtual anxiety context as anxiety elicit­ing, avoid this context, and show startle po­tentiation in this context. Our studies fur­ther revealed that known risk factors for anx­iety disorders affect context conditioning. We found that enhanced trait anxiety facilitates contextual fear conditioning. In addition, we observed that individuals with genetic risks for anxiety disorders learn context condition­ing very effectively as shown in startle poten­tiation. These findings suggest that in individ­uals vulnerable to anxiety disorders such as panic disorder or posttraumatic stress disor­der, context conditioning may have contrib­uted to the development of these disorders.

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