Abstract
Renewal of fear outside treatment context is a challenge for behavioral therapies. Prior studies suggest a social buffering effect that fear response is attenuated in the presence of social company. However, few studies have examined the role of social company in reducing fear renewal. Here, we used a Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure including acquisition, extinction and test stages to examine social buffering effect on fear memory renewal in male rats. The test context was manipulated to be either different from the extinction one in ABC model, or same as that in ACC model. All conditioned subjects underwent extinction individually in Experiment 1 but with a partner in Experiment 2. In test, both experiments manipulated social company (alone vs. accompanied) and context (ABC vs. ACC). Experiment 1 showed more freezing in ABC than in ACC model during the test-alone condition, indicating a fear renewal effect which, however, was absent during the test-accompanied condition. Also, accompanied subjects showed less freezing compared to alone subjects in the ABC model. In Experiment 2, animals showed a similar freezing in ABC and ACC models despite being tested alone, implying that social company offered at extinction disrupted fear renewal. Again, we observed reduced freezing in accompanied relative to alone subjects in the test. These results suggest that social company is effective in disrupting fear renewal after leaving treatment context.
Highlights
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by the intrusive flashback of fear memories or difficulty in fear memory extinction (Jovanovic and Ressler, 2010)
There was no significant Context and Block interaction [F(1,24) = 2.5; p = 0.12], Context by Company interaction [F(1,24) = 0.19; p = 0.67], Context by Block interaction [F(1,24) = 2.5; p = 0.12], or Context by Block by Company [F(1,24) = 0.24; p = 0.63]. These data suggest that the extinction was successful, and the extinction effect was similar across the four samples before the test
Giving social company at different stage in two experiments, the current study focuses on how social company modulates fear memory renewal elicited by contextual updating
Summary
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by the intrusive flashback of fear memories or difficulty in fear memory extinction (Jovanovic and Ressler, 2010). Exposure therapy, which is based on extinction theory, aims to treat PTSD patients through repeated presence of traumarelated stimuli in the absence of real threats (Mark and Lovell, 1998). The extinguished fear memory tends to renew when fear-related stimulus is presented outside of the extinction context (Bouton and Bolles, 1979). Fear memory renewal is defined as the recovery of an extinguished fear response when test occurs in a novel context different from that of extinction (Boschen et al, 2009; Polack et al, 2013)
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