Dopamine and fear extinction: genetic evidence

Whittle, N., Maurer, V., Murphy, C., Rainer, J., Bindreither, D., Hauschild, M., . . . Singewald, N. (2016). Enhancing dopaminergic signaling and histone acetylation promotes long-term rescue of deficient fear extinction. Transl Psychiatry, 6, e974. doi:10.1038/tp.2016.231

Ok, I write this post just to help me understand this paper better.

The studies of Extinction all hope to solve one problem: how to make the extinction context-independent? This problem is important because extinction is the key for exposure-therapy in clinical settings. Make the extinction context-independent means that it will help the exposure-therapy more effective.

Haaker et al. (2013) found that single dose of L-dopa can help the extinction less context-dependent. In this study, Whittle et al. replicated the key results of Haaker et al. (2013).

Here is some methodology part of this paper, as I paraphrased.

Methods
     subject: 129S1/SvImJ (S1) mice, which that exhibit normal fear learning, but deficient fear extinction acquisition16–22 and impaired fear extinction consolidation/retrieval.

Note: it is interesting to know that this part doesn't describe the number of mice per experimental condition.

     exp. paradigm: conditioning, extinction, spontaneous recovery, renewal (AB|C)


     Manipulatioins:
          Dietary ZnR (Zonic Restriction): Low Zn (ZnR) v. Normal Zn (Control)
          Drug: MS-275 v. L-dopa v. control

Results:

     
Below is the key results for me: L-dopa showed effect during the ER period, this results replicated Haaker et al (2013).

So it seems that L-dopa is a very effective way to modulate fear extinction.

Reference:
Haaker, J., Gaburro, S., Sah, A., Gartmann, N., Lonsdorf, T. B., Meier, K., . . . Kalisch, R. (2013). Single dose of l-dopa makes extinction memories context-independent and prevents the return of fear. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(26), E2428-E2436. doi:10.1073/pnas.1303061110


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Resilience to Loss and Potential Trauma

Image
Bonanno, G. A., Westphal, M., & Mancini, A. D. (2011). Resilience to Loss and Potential Trauma. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 7(1), 511-535. doi:10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032210-104526 Today I read this review on the train from Mainz to Amsterdam, the swinging train made me a little bit impatient, so the reading experience is not so good.  In this classic review, Bonanno et al., (2013) pointed out that using new analytic method -- latent growth mixture modelling -- could overcome the disadvantages of two previous approach (i.e., psychopathology approach and  the trauma event approach).  figure 1, adapted from Banonno (2004) The interesting results from the latent growth mixture modelling are that higher percentage of resilience was found.  Then this paper reviewed factors that influence resilience: personality, exposure, SES etc. The trait self-enhancement was specially mentioned in the personality factors. Also interesting to me...
Read more

《贝叶斯因子及其在JASP中的实现》一文的投稿记录

Image
2017.09.27，投稿到《科学通报》 2017.09.28，初筛退稿 谢谢您的来稿。经初步审查，来稿反映了所在研究领域的新成果，有一定的科学意义。遗憾的是，您的稿件专业性太强，不适合于我刊，建议改投有关专业性期刊。  2017.09.29，给编辑写信： 尊敬的编辑老师： 您好，前几天我们将《贝叶斯因子及其在JASP中的实现》（稿号：N972017-01031）投稿到《科学通报》。经过初步的审查之后，贵刊编辑部肯定了本文的科学性和新颖性，但认为本文专业性太强，予以退稿。来信是想借与编辑部的专家交流一下，为什么作者们认为本文并非专业性文章，希望能够借机与编辑部的专家进行探讨。由于稿件处理邮件中建议不要直接回复csb@scichina.org，所以我们斗胆给您写，如果有不当之处，请您多包涵。 诚如Salsburg (2001)[1]在《The lady tasting tea: How statistics revolutionized science in the twentieth century》中所说，统计方法在现代科学研究中占据着越来越重要的地位。几乎所有实证研究领域均采用统计推断的来辅助研究者进行推断，从而得到研究结论。然而遗憾的是，科研工作者们对统计推断方法却普遍认识不足，这一点从研究者们对研究中最常用的统计指标p值的理解程度方面可见一斑：绝大学部分研究者对p值的真正含义存在误解[2]。正是如此，2016年，美国统计学会为此专门发表申明来澄清p值的意义[3]。 我们撰写本文的主要目的，在于向国内的研究者介绍p值以外的另一种统计推断方法——贝叶斯因子，以及如何通过统计软件使用该方法。我们希望通过此文，能够起到抛砖引玉的作用，与国内同行一起讨论如何在科学研究中正确地使用统计推断方法，从而使用科学的统计方法，进行科学研究，避免国际科学界正面临的可重复性危机（reproducibility crisis）。正是如此，我们希望能够在综合的学术期刊上，与更多正在从事科学研究的同行进行讨论。可以预期，如果将本文投稿到更加专业的期刊，其可能无法与其他学科的同行进行交流与对话。例如，2016年，美国统计学会在统计学专业期刊The American Statistician上发表了关于p值的申明[3]，导致这个申明并未引起各学科研究者的广泛关注，...
Read more

References for beginners on skin conductance response (SCR)

Image
Skin conductance response (SCR) is a widely used psychophysiological measurement in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, especially emotion studies. Even it is a relatively "old" method used, it seems that there is no explicit standard how should you do it. More or less, the tips are told by your colleagues instead of from an explicit guidebook. Here I recorded the articles, books, and manuals that helped me to know more about SCR, which I will be used in a fear extinction study. The general workflow of the SCR is not super complex, only three steps: Recording. This is the most or lest important thing you need to care, depending on your experience. It is the most important thing because data quality is always the most important aspect of research. "garbage in, garbage out". It is the lest important thing because, usually, you will follow the way your lab's done previously. For example, which part of the body will you stick the electrode so that you can g...
Read more