Trial reportPsychopharmacology2019
L-DOPA improves extinction memory retrieval after successful fear extinction.
Trial report in Psychopharmacology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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
24 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 41 citations in OpenAlex.
- Impaired learning, memory, and extinction in posttraumatic stress disorder: translational meta-analysis of clinical and preclinical studies.Translational psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Navigating the garden of forking paths for data exclusions in fear conditioning research.eLife · 2019Pooled it
- Effect of the Matrix Metalloproteinase Inhibitor Doxycycline on Human Trace Fear Memory.eNeuro · 2023Trial
- Trial
- Dopamine D2/3 receptors and functional connectivity during fear extinction: A PET-fMRI study.Neuroimage. Reports · 2026Article
- Chemogenetic activation of the medial prefrontal cortex alleviates the impaired extinction of fear memory through the increase in the binding of EGR1 and TET1 in an animal model of PTSD.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- A systematic review of spontaneous recovery in human fear conditioning.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Current State of the Neuroscience of Fear Extinction and Its Relevance to Anxiety Disorders.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- Dopaminergic drugs modulate fear extinction-related processes in humans, but effects are mild.Brain communications · 2025Article
- Replication study on the role of dopamine-dependent prefrontal reactivations in human extinction memory retrieval.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Fear extinction rescuing effects of dopamine and L-DOPA in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Dopaminergic D2-like receptor stimulation affects attention on contextual information and modulates BOLD activation of extinction-related brain areas.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Alleviating anxiety and taming trauma: Novel pharmacotherapeutics for anxiety disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder.Neuropharmacology · 2023Review
- Comparison of behavioral and brain indices of fear renewal during a standard vs. novel immersive reality Pavlovian fear extinction paradigm in healthy adults.Behavioural brain research · 2023Article
- The effects of the recurrent social isolation stress on fear extinction and dopamine DPharmacological reports : PR · 2023Article
- Causally mapping human threat extinction relevant circuits with depolarizing brain stimulation methods.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Dopamine and fear memory formation in the human amygdala.Molecular psychiatry · 2022Article
- Article
- Altered basal forebrain BOLD signal variability at rest in posttraumatic stress disorder: A potential candidate vulnerability mechanism for neurodegeneration in PTSD.Human brain mapping · 2021Article
- Dopamine in Fear Extinction.Frontiers in synaptic neuroscience · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleA promising strategy to prevent a return of fear after exposure-based therapy in anxiety disorders is to pharmacologically enhance the extinction memory consolidation presumed to occur after exposure. Accumulating evidence suggests that the effect of a number of pharmacological consolidation enhancers depends on a successful fear reduction during exposure. Here, we employed the dopamine precursor L-DOPA to clarify whether its documented potential to enhance extinction memory consolidation is dependent on successful fear extinction.
methodsIn two double-blind, randomized and placebo-controlled experiments (experiment 1: N = 79, experiment 2: N = 32) comprising fear conditioning (day 1), extinction followed by administration of 150 mg L-DOPA or placebo (day 2) and a memory test (day 3) in healthy male adults, conditioned responses were assessed as differential skin conductance responses. We tested whether the effect of L-DOPA on conditioned responses at test depended on conditioned responses at the end of extinction in an experiment with a short (10 trials, experiment 1) and long (25 trials, experiment 2) extinction session.
resultsIn both experiments, the effect of L-DOPA was dependent on conditioned responses at the end of extinction. That is, post-extinction L-DOPA compared to placebo administration reduced conditioned responses at test only in participants showing a complete reduction of conditioned fear at the end of extinction.
conclusionThe results support the potential use of L-DOPA as a pharmacological adjunct to exposure treatment, but point towards a common boundary condition for pharmacological consolidation enhancers: a successful reduction of fear in the exposure session.
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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.