Research on relapse and reconsolidation of contextual conditioning: implications for the treatment of generalized anxiety.

Fear conditioning research in humans is extremely valuable for the study (and treatment) of specific fears (e.g., phobias). However, this research paradigm does not tap into more generalized, chronic forms of anxiety (with generalized anxiety disorder as a prototypical example). Within my doctoral research, I used an innovative context conditioning procedure to develop effective methods to reduce generalized anxiety in the short term (Fonteyne et al., 2009, 2010). The main goal of the current project is to challenge and improve these anxiety reduction methods in the long term. In a first series of experiments, we will investigate the conditions under which generalized anxiety can return after successful reduction. Next, we will investigate whether generalized anxiety can also be more permanently modified (or even erased). To attain this, innovative procedures and insights from specific fear conditioning research, based on reconsolidation, will be translated to the domain of generalized anxiety. This research project will open novel pathways to improve current anxiety treatments and the prevention of relapse (by focusing on generalized anxiety, its return and permanent erasure). The planned experiments are designed in order to reveal the underlying behavioral and neurobiological processes responsible for these effects.

Keywords:Context conditioning, Anxiety, Fear conditioning, Extinction, Memory, Reconsolidation, Relapse

Disciplines:Biological and physiological psychology, General psychology, Other psychology and cognitive sciences