TY  - JOUR
A1  - Stegmann, Yannik
A1  - Schiele, Miriam A.
A1  - Schümann, Dirk
A1  - Lonsdorf, Tina B.
A1  - Zwanzger, Peter M.
A1  - Romanos, Marcel
A1  - Reif, Andreas
A1  - Domschke, Katharina
A1  - Deckert, Jürgen
A1  - Gamer, Matthias
A1  - Pauli, Paul
T1  - Individual differences in human fear generalization-pattern identification and implications for anxiety disorders
T2  - Translational Psychiatry
N2  - Previous research indicates that anxiety disorders are characterized by an overgeneralization of conditioned fear as compared with healthy participants. Therefore, fear generalization is considered a key mechanism for the development of anxiety disorders. However, systematic investigations on the variance in fear generalization are lacking. Therefore, the current study aims at identifying distinctive phenotypes of fear generalization among healthy participants. To this end, 1175 participants completed a differential fear conditioning phase followed by a generalization test. To identify patterns of fear generalization, we used a k-means clustering algorithm based on individual arousal generalization gradients. Subsequently, we examined the reliability and validity of the clusters and phenotypical differences between subgroups on the basis of psychometric data and markers of fear expression. Cluster analysis reliably revealed five clusters that systematically differed in mean responses, differentiation between conditioned threat and safety, and linearity of the generalization gradients, though mean response levels accounted for most variance. Remarkably, the patterns of mean responses were already evident during fear acquisition and corresponded most closely to psychometric measures of anxiety traits. The identified clusters reliably described subgroups of healthy individuals with distinct response characteristics in a fear generalization test. Following a dimensional view of psychopathology, these clusters likely delineate risk factors for anxiety disorders. As crucial group characteristics were already evident during fear acquisition, our results emphasize the importance of average fear responses and differentiation between conditioned threat and safety as risk factors for anxiety disorders.
KW  - Human behaviour
KW  - Psychiatric disorders
Y1  - 2019
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/54434
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-544343
SN  - 2158-3188
N1  - Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
VL  - 9
IS  - 1, Art. 307
SP  - 1
EP  - 11
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
CY  - London
ER  -