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People with post-traumatic stress disorder continue to be fearful and avoidant and to have hyperaroused responses to reminders of the traumatic stimulus long after the event, even if it could never recur. Researchers used functional MRI to examine differences in the neurobiology of extinction of fear conditioning in 16 patients with PTSD and 15 controls without PTSD but with exposure to similar traumatic events.
Fear conditioning was induced by pairing a shock with a picture of a room containing a blue light (“conditioned picture”). Extinction training was conducted by showing a different picture with the light but without the shock (“extinction picture”). On the following day (day 2), recall of extinction was tested by display of the extinc…