1 / 11

Extinction of a conditioned fear response during anesthesia

Extinction of a conditioned fear response during anesthesia. Sarah E. Reichert Baldwin-Wallace College. Introduction. Pearson (1961) therapeutic suggestions decrease post-surgical recovery time. Follow-up experiments have yielded mixed results. -limited to older adults

kynan
Download Presentation

Extinction of a conditioned fear response during anesthesia

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Extinction of a conditioned fear response during anesthesia Sarah E. Reichert Baldwin-Wallace College

  2. Introduction • Pearson (1961) therapeutic suggestions decrease post-surgical recovery time. • Follow-up experiments have yielded mixed results. -limited to older adults -small sample size -few studies done

  3. Animal analogues • Few controlled studies with animals have also yielded mixed results. • Fear acquisition in mice (Pang et al, 1996) • Fear acquisition in rats required epinephrine (Gold et al, 1985) • Taste aversion in rats (Bermudez-Rattoni et al, 1988)

  4. Purpose • To investigate whether extinction of a fear can take place under general anesthesia. • To investigate whether a taste aversion can develop when the sickness occurs under anesthesia.

  5. Experiment 1 • Tone  Shock (12 pairings over 6 days) • Tone elicits freezing response • Pentobarbitol  reflex tests  extinction • Extinction involved either tone and shocks (EU), tones only (E), shocks only (U) or no stimuli (FC) • Tone only to see if extinction under anesthesia had any effect on freezing.

  6. Results • Acquisition rate did not differ among the groups. • No group differences were found in the test session.

  7. Experiment 2 • Baseline for consumption (2 days) • Rats matched on baseline consumption • 5 minutes access  Pentobarbitol  reflex tests • Half of rats get LiCl, others do not • 5 minutes access to test for aversion to flavor

  8. Results • Consumption during conditioning was similar in the two groups, but differed significantly in the test • Group X Trial, F(1,11 = 6.18, p< .03)

  9. Conclusions • No evidence for extinction of fear under anesthesia. In a subsequent study, evidence for acquisition of fear under anesthesia was also lacking. • Evidence for the development of a taste aversion forming during anesthesia. • Future research will investigate extinction of a taste aversion under anesthesia.

  10. Implications • The findings of this study have expanded our understanding of information processing under anesthesia. • Help refine behavioral therapy to more successfully treat phobias and taste aversions.

  11. References • Bermudez-Rattoni, F., Forthman, D., Sanchez, M., Perez, J., Garcia, J. (1988). Odor and taste aversions conditioned in anesthetized rats. Behavioral Neuroscience, 102(5),726-732. • Gold, P., Weinberger, N., Sternberg, D. (1985). Epinephrine-induced learning under anesthesia: retention performance at several training- testing intervals. Behavioral Neuroscience, 99(5), 1019-1022. • Pang, R., Turndorf, H., Quartermain, D. (1996). Pavlovian fear conditioning in mice anesthetized with halothane. Physiology & Behavior, 59(4/5), 873-875. • Pearson, R.E. (1961). Response to suggestions given under general anesthesia. In Memory and Awareness in Anaesthesia III: Proceedings of Third International Symposium. Anaesthesia, amnesia, and the cognitive unconscious (pp. 21-45). Rockland: Swets & Zeitlinger.

More Related