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Stress-Enhanced Fear Learning, a Robust Rodent Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
05:49

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Published on: October 13, 2018

Stress increases behavioral resistance to extinction.

Lars Schwabe1, Oliver T Wolf

  • 1Department of Cognitive Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany. Lars.Schwabe@rub.de

Psychoneuroendocrinology
|March 8, 2011
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Stress increases behavioral persistence, making actions resistant to extinction shortly after learning. This suggests stress may promote habitual behavior, hindering adaptation to environmental changes.

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral neuroscience
  • Cognitive psychology
  • Stress research

Background:

  • Behavioral persistence is crucial for goal achievement but can hinder environmental adaptation.
  • Stress significantly impacts learning and memory, yet its effect on behavioral persistence remains less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the impact of acute stress on behavioral persistence.
  • To determine if stress influences the resistance of learned behaviors to extinction.

Main Methods:

  • Participants underwent a stress or control condition.
  • Instrumental learning task to obtain a food reward.
  • Extinction phases were introduced during learning to assess response modification.

Main Results:

  • Stress exposure led to responding that was insensitive to extinction procedures shortly after initial learning.
  • Overall learning curves were not significantly affected by the stress manipulation.
  • Stress increased the resistance of behavior to extinction, suggesting a shift towards habitual responding.

Conclusions:

  • Acute stress enhances behavioral persistence by increasing resistance to extinction.
  • Stress-induced persistence may be mediated by the habitualization of behavior.
  • Findings highlight how stress can impair adaptive behavioral flexibility.