Bilateral alternating auditory stimulations facilitate fear extinction and retrieval
An animal model of fear recovery showed that BLS facilitate fear extinction and fear extinction retrieval, can this work in humans too?
Article Abstract
“Disruption of fear conditioning, its extinction and its retrieval are at the core of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Such deficits, especially fear extinction delay, disappear after alternating bilateral stimulations (BLS) during eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. An animal model of fear recovery, based on auditory cued fear conditioning and extinction learning, recently showed that BLS facilitate fear extinction and fear extinction retrieval. Our goal was to determine if these previous results found in animals can be reproduced in humans. Twenty-two healthy participants took part in a classical fear conditioning, extinction, and extinction recall paradigm. Behavioral responses (fear expectations) as well as psychophysiological measures (skin conductance responses, SCRs) were recorded. The results showed a significant fear expectation decrease during fear extinction with BLS. Additionally, SCR for fear extinction retrieval were significantly lower with BLS. Our results demonstrate the importance of BLS to reduce negative emotions, and provide a successful model to further explore the neural mechanisms underlying the sole BLS effect in the EMDR.”
—Description from publisher
Article Access
Open Access
Boukezzi, S., Silva, C., Nazarian, B., Rousseau, P. F., Guedj, E., Valenzuela-Moguillansky, C., & Khalfa, S. (2017). Bilateral alternating auditory stimulations facilitate fear extinction and retrieval. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 990. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00990
Date
June 14, 2017
Creator(s)
Sarah Boukezzi, Catarina Silva, Bruno Nazarian
Contributor(s)
Pierre-François Rousseau, Eric Guedj, Camila Valenzuela-Moguillansky, Stéphanie Khalfa
Practice & Methods
BLS, Mechanisms of Action
Extent
6 pages
Publisher
Frontiers
Rights
Copyright © 2017 Boukezzi, Silva, Nazarian, Rousseau, Guedj, Valenzuela Moguillansky and Khalfa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
APA Citation
Boukezzi, S., Silva, C., Nazarian, B., Rousseau, P. F., Guedj, E., Valenzuela-Moguillansky, C., & Khalfa, S. (2017). Bilateral alternating auditory stimulations facilitate fear extinction and retrieval. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 990. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00990
Audience
EMDR Therapists, Other Mental Health Professionals
Language
English
Content Type
Article, Peer-Reviewed
Access Type
External Resource, Open Access
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