Original articleThe Benzodiazepine Alprazolam Dissociates Contextual Fear from Cued Fear in Humans as Assessed by Fear-potentiated Startle
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were healthy volunteers who gave written informed consent that had been approved by the National Institutes of Mental Health Human Investigation Review Board. Inclusion criteria included the following: (1) no past or current psychiatric disorders as per Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID; First et al 1995), (2) no medical condition that interfered with the objectives of the study as established by a physician, and (3) no use of illicit drugs or psychoactive medications
Cued Fear
The results in each condition and in each treatment are presented in Table 1.Figure 1A displays the magnitude of fear-potentiated startle (cue minus ITI). There was a significant main effect of condition [F(2,30) = 11.9, p = .001, GG-ϵ = .65], reflecting greater fear-potentiated startle during the cue in the U condition, compared to the N and P condition. These effects were not affected by treatment, as reflected by a lack of treatment main effect [F(3,45) = .03, ns] and treatment × condition
Discussion
The present study sought to establish a psychopharmacological distinction by using the benzodiazepine alprazolam between a phasic aversive response to a threat cue (cued fear) and a more sustained aversive response associated with the experimental context in which shocks are anticipated (contextual anxiety). The experimental model to elicit these two aversive states was based on preclinical data in rodents (Davis 1998) and on empirical work in our laboratory that used the threat of predictable
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