Pharmacological enhancement of learning in exposure therapy

摘要: Publisher Summary Pharmacotherapy has been thought to be contraindicated in combination with behavior therapy for the treatment of many anxiety disorders, particularly phobias and performance anxiety, because it was interfere effectiveness exposure therapy. Recent progress made understanding learning processes that underlie a potential mechanism therapy—namely, extinction. “Extinction” refers decrement conditioned response (CR) over time following repeated stimulus (CS) absence expected unconditioned (UCS). More recent work focused on extinction fear behaviors addition appetitive behaviors. Experimentally studied both animals humans as useful model disorders. With conditioning, learned is established pairing an aversive UCS neutral CS. During extinction, presentation CS results loss From operational perspective, may thus defined “a reduction strength or probability consequence UCS.”