Inhibitory control training might be a gateway to enhance fear extinction

Inhibitory learning forms an essential component of extinction learning; deficits in it could hinder extinction. Previous research has shown that optimizing inhibitory learning has the potential to improve extinction. The current study aims to improve extinction and extinction recall through inhibitory control training. The participants underwent a 3-day fear conditioning experiment, habituation and fear acquisition occurred on day 1, extinction on day 2 and extinction recall on day 3. On day 2, participants were randomly assigned to two groups: an inhibitory control training and standard extinction (IC-SE) group, and a standard extinction (SE) group. IC-SE underwent a stop-signal task training before extinction. The SE group did not undergo any training. Our findings indicate that inhibitory control training, using the stop-signal task, leads to a greater reduction in UCS-expectancy and subjective arousal ratings during extinction. This effect persisted and was observed 24 h later during extinction recall. Our findings suggest that training inhibitory control may aid extinction through retrieval suppression.