New Learning and Unlearning: Strangers or Accomplices in Threat Memory Attenuation?

To achieve greatest efficacy, therapies for attenuating fear and anxiety should preclude the re-emergence of emotional responses. Of relevance to this aim, preclinical models of threat memory reduction are considered to engage one of two discrete neural processes: either establishment of a new behav...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in neurosciences (Regular ed.) 2016-05, Vol.39 (5), p.340-351
Main Authors: Clem, Roger L, Schiller, Daniela
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Brain - physiology
Conditioning, Classical - physiology
engram
extinction
Extinction, Psychological - physiology
Fear & phobias
Humans
Learning
Learning - physiology
Memory
Memory - physiology
Neurology
Psychotherapy
reconsolidation
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Summary:To achieve greatest efficacy, therapies for attenuating fear and anxiety should preclude the re-emergence of emotional responses. Of relevance to this aim, preclinical models of threat memory reduction are considered to engage one of two discrete neural processes: either establishment of a new behavioral response that competes with, and thereby temporarily interferes with the expression of, threat memory (new learning) or one that modifies and thereby disrupts threat memory (unlearning). We contend that a strict dichotomy of new learning and unlearning does not provide a compelling explanation for current data. Instead, we suggest that the evidence warrants consideration of alternative models that assume cooperation rather than competition between formation of new cellular traces and the modification of preexisting ones.
ISSN:0166-2236
1878-108X
DOI:10.1016/j.tins.2016.03.003