Becoming anxious: how fear conditioning in humans affects different cognitive systems

PICCO SOLEDAD; FERNÁNDEZ RODRIGO S; PEDREIRA MARIA EUGENIA

CABA

Jornada; la I Reunión de Biología del Comportamiento del Cono Sur; 2017

Classical conditioning is the process by which the representation of two stimulus become associated and then, one of them (CS) is capable of predicting the occurrence of the other (US).Neurobiological basis of anxiety disorders were studied in laboratory settings using pavlovian fear conditioning (FC). Although, little is known about how the formation of a fear memory affects other cognitive and behavioral systems associated with these type of mental disorders. Anxiety manifest as a persistent and generalized defensive system, activated when predicted aversive events are perceived as a threat and uncertain. Moreover, this response involves a disrupted value calculation (threat overestimation) and attentional hypervigilance for potential threats.Here we aim to study how an aversive implicit memory (FC) in humans could affect other cognitive-behavioral systems such as those mentioned. To reach such goal, we will use different anxiety inventories (BAI and STAI) to discard potential symptoms, electrodermal activity as our implicit memory measure, an attentional time detection task (dot probe), a semantic fluency task and a probability and cost task. In Experiment 1 we compared trained and untrained groups which underwent FC followed by the dot probe and the other cognitive tasks in the same day. In Experiment 2, we used the same design evaluating the different cognitive systems 48 hs later. We revealed that the formation of a fear memory affects some cognitive and behavioral systems which are involved in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders.