title: Frozen with fear: Conditioned suppression in a virtual reality model of human anxiety.
abstract: Freezing-like topographies of behavior are elicited in conditioned suppression tasks whereby appetitive behavior is reduced by presentations of an aversively conditioned threat cue relative to a safety cue. Conditioned suppression of operant behavior by a Pavlovian threat cue is an established laboratory model of quantifying the response impairment seen in anxiety disorders. Little is known however about how different response topographies indicative of conditioned suppression are elicited in humans. Here, we refined a novel virtual reality (VR) paradigm in which presentations of a threat cue of unpredictable duration occurred while participants performed an operant response of shooting and destroying boxes searching for hidden gold. The VR paradigm detected significant suppression of response topographies (shots, hits and breaks) for a Pavlovian threat cue relative to a safety cue and novel cue presentations. Implications of the present findings for translational research on appetitive and aversive conflict in anxiety disorders are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Experimental Psychopathology Lab, Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Devon
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Allcoat
authors.affiliation: College of Medicine, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: W James
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Greville
authors.affiliation: College of Medicine, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Philip M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Newton
authors.affiliation: Experimental Psychopathology Lab, Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, United Kingdom; Department of Psychology, Reykjavík University, Menntavegur 1, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland. Electronic address: s.o.dymond@swansea.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dymond
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Anxiety; Conditioned suppression; Fear; Freezing; Humans