Carbon Dioxide Reactivity Differentially Predicts Fear Expression After Extinction and Retrieval-Extinction in Rats

Cues present during a traumatic event may result in persistent fear responses. These responses can be attenuated through extinction learning, a core component of exposure therapy. Exposure/extinction is effective for some people, but not all. We recently demonstrated that carbon dioxide (CO₂) reactivity predicts fear extinction memory and orexin activation and that orexin activation predicts fear extinction memory, which suggests that a CO₂ challenge may enable identification of whether an individual is a good candidate for an extinction-based approach. Another method to attenuate conditioned responses, retrieval-extinction, renders the original associative memory labile via distinct neural mechanisms. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether we could replicate previous findings that retrieval-extinction is more effective than extinction at preventing the return of fear and that CO₂ reactivity predicts fear memory after extinction. We also examined whether CO₂ reactivity predicts fear memory after retrieval-extinction.

Male rats first underwent a CO₂ challenge and fear conditioning and were assigned to receive either standard extinction (n = 28) or retrieval-extinction (n = 28). Then, they underwent a long-term memory (LTM) test and a reinstatement test.

We found that retrieval-extinction resulted in lower freezing during extinction, LTM, and reinstatement than standard extinction. Using the best subset approach to linear regression, we found that CO₂ reactivity predicted LTM after extinction and also predicted LTM after retrieval-extinction, although to a lesser degree.

CO₂ reactivity could be used as a screening tool to determine whether an individual may be a good candidate for an extinction-based therapeutic approach.