Novelty-facilitated extinction: Providing a novel outcome in place of an expected threat diminishes recovery of defensive responses

摘要

BackgroundExperimental extinction serves as a model for psychiatric treatments based on associative learning. However, the effects of extinction are often transient, as evidenced by post-extinction return of defensive behaviors. From a therapeutic perspective, an inherent problem with extinction may be that mere omission of threat is not sufficient to reduce future threat uncertainty. The current study tested an augmented form of extinction that replaced- rather than merely omitted- expected threat outcomes with novel non-threat outcomes, with the goal of reducing post-extinction return of defensive behaviors.