Preventing generalization of fear

Anxiety disorders rank among the most prevalent and chronic forms of psychopathology and pose an important problem to health care and society. While research focuses mainly on interventions to reduce fear symptoms after fear learning, research on prevention is relatively scarce. It is hypothesized that fear generalization plays a crucial role in the transition from adaptive to pathological fear. To restrain fear generalization could, thus, be crucial in the prevention of clinical anxiety. Previous neutral encounters with potential traumatic situations can influence fear learning. For example, neutral experiences with the dentist previous to a traumatic dental experience can protect the development of dental phobia. These neutral experiences not only affect fear learning but also subsequent generalization (e.g. fear for dentist generalizes to all medical settings). It is hypothesized that fear generalization is mediated by pattern completion. That is, the fear memory can be activated by a subset of the original cues, resulting in generalization of fear in a context that is similar but not equal to the conditioning context. In contrast, when pattern separation mechanisms come into play, the fear memory will not be activated and generalization will be reduced. The current research focuses on how previous neutral experiences can tip the balance in favor of pattern separation over pattern completion in the encounter with a situation that is similar to the fear-learning episode.