One of the leading treatments for anxiety disorders and phobias is exposure therapy, in which the person confronts the very thing they fear. Repeated enough times, this exposure helps to diminish or even extinguish their fear. Researchers at Tufts University have published a new study in the journal Neuron that shows the neural changes that accompany exposure therapy. The researchers first induced fear in a group of mice by placing them in a box and exposing them to fearful stimuli. In the mice that had received exposure therapy (they were repeatedly placed in the box without the associated fearful stimuli), there was a significant increase in the numbers of an inhibitory junction known as perisomatic synapse around the fear neurons in the mice. These synapses allow one group of neurons to turn down the activity of another. The extra perisomatic synapses created via exposure therapy turned down the activity of the fear neurons in mice. Although exposure therapy is effective in many humans with anxiety disorders, it isnt effective for everyone, nor does it completely eliminate the fear. Researchers say that targeting these synapses may help to improve the outcomes of exposure therapy. Read more: bit.ly/1gf9zot Journal article: Fear Extinction Causes Target-Specific Remodeling of Perisomatic Inhibitory Synapses. Neuron, 2013. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.07.047 Image credit: photoloni/Flickr
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 06:16:21 +0000
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