title: Fear conditioning induced by interpersonal conflicts in healthy individuals.
abstract: Psychophysiological markers have been focused to investigate the psychopathology of psychiatric disorders and personality subtypes. In order to understand neurobiological mechanisms underlying these conditions, fear-conditioning model has been widely used. However, simple aversive stimuli are too simplistic to understand mechanisms because most patients with psychiatric disorders are affected by social stressors. The objective of this study was to test the feasibility of a newly-designed conditioning experiment using a stimulus to cause interpersonal conflicts and examine associations between personality traits and response to that stimulus. Twenty-nine healthy individuals underwent the fear conditioning and extinction experiments in response to three types of stimuli: a simple aversive sound, disgusting pictures, and pictures of an actors' face with unpleasant verbal messages that were designed to cause interpersonal conflicts. Conditioned response was quantified by the skin conductance response (SCR). Correlations between the SCR changes, and personality traits measured by the Zanarini Rating Scale for Borderline Personality Disorder (ZAN-BPD) and Revised NEO Personality Inventory were explored. The interpersonal conflict stimulus resulted in successful conditioning, which was subsequently extinguished, in a similar manner as the other two stimuli. Moreover, a greater degree of conditioned response to the interpersonal conflict stimulus correlated with a higher ZAN-BPD total score. Fear conditioning and extinction can be successfully achieved, using interpersonal conflicts as a stimulus. Given that conditioned fear caused by the interpersonal conflicts is likely associated with borderline personality traits, this paradigm could contribute to further understanding of underlying mechanisms of interpersonal fear implicated in borderline personality disorder.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Mitsuhiro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tada
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan; Geriatric Psychiatry Division, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Uchida
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Takaki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Maeda
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Mika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Konishi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan; Centre for Advanced Research on Logic and Sensibility, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Umeda
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan; Centre for Advanced Research on Logic and Sensibility, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan; Department of Psychophysiology, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Yuri
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Terasawa
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan; Geriatric Psychiatry Division, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Multimodal Imaging Group-Research Imaging Centre, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Shinichiro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nakajima
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Masaru
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mimura
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine, Yokohama, Japan.
authors.forename: Tomoyuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Miyazaki
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine, Yokohama, Japan; Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Takuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Takahashi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D013016:Sound