Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Single dose of L-dopa makes extinction memories context-independent and prevents the return of fear.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 93 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
93 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A translational perspective on neural circuits of fear extinction: Current promises and challenges.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2018Pooled it
- Alpha-2 Adrenoreceptor Antagonist Yohimbine Potentiates Consolidation of Conditioned Fear.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Exercise-induced increases in Anandamide and BDNF during extinction consolidation contribute to reduced threat following reinstatement: Preliminary evidence from a randomized controlled trial.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Trial
- L-DOPA improves extinction memory retrieval after successful fear extinction.Psychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Fear expression is suppressed by tyrosine administration.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- Role of Human Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Learning and Recall of Enhanced Extinction.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2019Trial
- Endogenous opioids regulate social threat learning in humans.Nature communications · 2017Trial
- The next generation of fear generalization.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2026Review
- Age and loneliness relate to reduced trust learning and alterations in amygdala function.iScience · 2026Article
- A ventral striatal learning signal reflecting individual differences in the success of fear extinction.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- A systematic review of spontaneous recovery in human fear conditioning.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- A brain-state-informed framework for simultaneous extinction of fear and functional magnetic resonance imaging acquisition in rodents.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Article
- High ovarian hormones present during fear extinction reduce fear relapse through a nigrostriatal dopamine pathway.Biology of sex differences · 2025Article
- Event Segmentation Promotes the Reorganization of Emotional Memory.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- Dopaminergic drugs modulate fear extinction-related processes in humans, but effects are mild.Brain communications · 2025Article
- Current State of the Neuroscience of Fear Extinction and Its Relevance to Anxiety Disorders.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- Sex differences in neural projections of fear memory processing in mice and humans.Science advances · 2024Article
- Pharmacological manipulations of the dorsomedial and dorsolateral striatum during fear extinction reveal opposing roles in fear renewal.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2024Article
- Replication study on the role of dopamine-dependent prefrontal reactivations in human extinction memory retrieval.Nature communications · 2024Article
33 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Traumatic events can engender persistent excessive fear responses to trauma reminders that may return even after successful treatment. Extinction, the laboratory analog of behavior therapy, does not erase conditioned fear memories but generates competing, fear-inhibitory "extinction memories" that, however, are tied to the context in which extinction occurred. Accordingly, a dominance of fear over extinction memory expression--and, thus, return of fear--is often observed if extinguished fear stimuli are encountered outside the extinction (therapy) context. We show that postextinction administration of the dopamine precursor L-dopa makes extinction memories context-independent, thus strongly reducing the return of fear in both mice and humans. Reduced fear is accompanied by decreased amygdala and enhanced ventromedial prefrontal cortex activation in both species. In humans, ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity is predicted by enhanced resting-state functional coupling of the area with the dopaminergic midbrain during the postextinction consolidation phase. Our data suggest that dopamine-dependent boosting of extinction memory consolidation is a promising avenue to improving anxiety therapy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.