A 97-dyad adolescent fMRI study found that trauma-exposed youth with high posttraumatic stress symptoms did not use parent-observed safety learning in the usual way: their arousal rose to a safety cue during vicarious extinction, F(1,159) = 4.81, p = 0.029, and parent-child physiological synchrony no longer predicted lower skin conductance during early safety learning.1 The …
A 2026 Nature mouse study found that basolateral amygdala astrocyte Ca2+ signals tracked fear retrieval and extinction, then showed causality: 3 mg/kg CNO manipulations of astrocyte DREADDs pushed early-extinction freezing in opposite directions while both disrupting later extinction retrieval.1 Research Highlights Astrocytes tracked fear state: after 3 tone-shock pairings and 2 days of 25 cue-only …
A 2026 multimodal MRI analysis of 509 healthy adults found that fear acquisition, extinction learning, and renewal were not predicted by one generic “fear circuit” score: functional connectivity predicted acquisition, structural connectivity predicted extinction, and effective connectivity was the only renewal signal.1 The extinction result is the clinically interesting piece because exposure therapy depends on …