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Related Concept Videos

Psychological Responses to Stress01:20

Psychological Responses to Stress

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Psychological responses to stress encompass the various cognitive and emotional reactions individuals experience when faced with challenging or threatening situations, such as a job loss. Prolonged exposure to stressors can disturb emotional balance, increasing negative emotions (e.g., anxiety and sadness) and diminishing positive emotions (e.g., joy and satisfaction). These persistent emotional shifts are associated with an increased risk of both physical illness and mental health issues, such...
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Behavior Therapy01:22

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Classical conditioning, as described by Ivan Pavlov, is a foundational concept in associative learning, where a neutral stimulus becomes capable of eliciting a conditioned response through association with an unconditioned stimulus. The process of acquisition, where this learning occurs, and the subsequent phenomena of contiguity, contingency, generalization, discrimination, extinction, and spontaneous recovery are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of classical conditioning.
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Preparedness and Phobias01:09

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Human fear responses to certain stimuli, such as darkness, heights, deep water, and blood, can often arise despite the absence of direct negative experiences. This phenomenon is rooted in evolutionary psychology, which posits that humans have developed a predisposition to fear stimuli that historically posed significant survival threats. This predisposition, known as preparedness, suggests that early humans who developed a fear of potentially dangerous entities, such as venomous snakes and...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 8, 2026

Extinction Training During the Reconsolidation Window Prevents Recovery of Fear
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Stress and Fear Extinction.

Stephen Maren1, Andrew Holmes2

  • 1Department of Psychology, Institute of Neuroscience, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.

Neuropsychopharmacology : Official Publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology
|June 25, 2015
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Stress significantly impairs fear extinction, a learning process crucial for overcoming trauma. Understanding these stress effects on the brain offers new therapeutic avenues for PTSD and related disorders.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Psychiatry
  • Behavioral Science

Background:

  • Stress plays a key role in psychiatric disorders, particularly posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
  • Stress can hinder the effectiveness of therapies like exposure therapy, which aim to reduce pathological fear.
  • Fear extinction, the suppression of trauma-related memories, is impaired by stress.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To examine how stress impacts fear extinction and recovery from trauma.
  • To identify the neurobiological mechanisms underlying stress-induced impairments in extinction.
  • To explore potential therapeutic targets for reversing these deficits.

Main Methods:

  • Review of emerging evidence on stress and fear extinction.
  • Description of structural and functional brain abnormalities (amygdala, prefrontal cortex, hippocampus) linked to stress.
  • Discussion of neurochemical and molecular alterations associated with extinction deficits.

Main Results:

  • Stress disrupts fear extinction by affecting key brain regions like the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus.
  • Structural and functional changes in these vulnerable brain areas contribute to impaired extinction.
  • Specific neurochemical and molecular changes are linked to these extinction deficits.

Conclusions:

  • Stress-induced abnormalities in the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus impair fear extinction.
  • Targeting stress-related neurochemical and molecular alterations may offer novel therapeutic strategies.
  • A deeper understanding of stress's neurobiology can improve treatments for PTSD and anxiety disorders.