Fear-potentiated startle conditioning to explicit and contextual cues in Gulf War veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder.

1999/02/01 by Christian Grillon, Charles A. Morgan · 327 citations
Medicine · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Anxiety #Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes #Audiology #Classical conditioning #Clinical psychology #Cognitive psychology #Conditioning #Developmental psychology #Extinction (optical mineralogy) #Fear conditioning #Fear-potentiated startle #Habituation #Measures of conditioned emotional response #Medicine #Memory and Neural Mechanisms #Moro reflex #Neuroscience #Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research #Posttraumatic stress #Psychiatry #Psychology #Reflex #Startle reaction #Startle response #Stimulus (psychology) #Unconditioned stimulus

paper · doi:10.1037/0021-843x.108.1.134

published in Journal of Abnormal Psychology 108(1), 134-142 (American Psychological Association)

openalex publication_date 1999/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11

Abstract

Aversive conditioning to explicit and contextual cues was examined in Gulf War veterans with and without posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by use of the startle reflex methodology. Veterans participated in a differential aversive conditioning experiment consisting of 2 sessions separated by 4 or 5 days. Each session comprised two startle habituation periods, a preconditioning phase, a conditioning phase, and a postconditioning extinction test. In contrast to the non-PTSD group, the PTSD group showed a lack of differential startle response in the presence of a conditioned stimulus with or without an unconditioned stimulus in Session 1 and an increase in the baseline startle response during Session 2. The PTSD group also exhibited normal differential conditioning following reconditioning in Session 2. These data suggest that individuals with PTSD tend to generalize fear across stimuli and are sensitized by stress.

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