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Project

Hypnos’ healing powers: The role of sleep in fear generalization.

The clinical observation can often be made that fear responses generalize to non-dangerous stimuli. This generalization constitutes a core aspect of what makes anxiety disorders so impairing. In posttraumatic stress disorder and in panic disorder, for example, patients are known to display fear responding to a myriad of stimuli that bear no relation to actual danger. Because (1) generalization is a function of memory for specific stimulus attributes and (2) sleep enhances memory, sleep might be expected to reduce generalization, whereas sleep deprivation might enhance maladaptive fear generalization. In a coherent set of experiments that make use of the human fear conditioning paradigm, we will investigate how sleep and sleep deprivation affect fear generalization in healthy volunteers. The expected results will add to our theoretical knowledge of the interplay between generalization, memory, and sleep, and will help to understand the etiology, treatment and prevention of anxiety disorders.
Date:1 Jan 2015 →  31 Dec 2018
Keywords:Sleep, fear, generalization, anxiety dis
Disciplines:Psychiatry and psychotherapy, Nursing, Other paramedical sciences, Clinical and counselling psychology, Other psychology and cognitive sciences