SynthesisPsychological medicine2020
Neural signatures of conditioning, extinction learning, and extinction recall in posttraumatic stress disorder: a meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies.
Synthesis in Psychological medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Neuroimaging insights into the psychosocial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.Translational psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Effects of psychotherapy on brain activation during negative emotional processing in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Brain imaging and behavior · 2024Pooled it
- Fear conditioning and extinction in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A systematic review.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Pooled it
- Does trauma-focused psychotherapy change the brain? A systematic review of neural correlates of therapeutic gains in PTSD.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2021Pooled it
- The Effect of Suvorexant on Fear Extinction Recall: A Double-Blind Randomised Controlled Pilot Trial in Healthy Individuals.Journal of sleep research · 2025Trial
- Cannabinoid modulation of corticolimbic activation during extinction learning and fear renewal in adults with posttraumatic stress disorder.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2023Trial
- Dissociable Thalamocortical Circuit Disruptions During Contextual Fear Renewal in PTSD.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Neurobiological Signatures of Dyadic Transmission of Fear Extinction in Adolescent Trauma Exposure and Posttraumatic Stress.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Augmenting extinction with counterconditioning strengthens and sustains neural safety representations in PTSD.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Fear learning in unmedicated patients with anxiety disorders: a comparison of delay conditioning, fear reversal, and trace conditioning.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- From Struggling (With) Screening Tests to Mouse Models of Depression-Relevant Neurobehavioral States.Current protocols · 2026Article
- Neural correlates of human fear conditioning and sources of variability in 2199 individuals.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Exposure to unpredictable childhood environments is associated with amygdala activation during early extinction in adulthood.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- How Fear Memory is Updated: From Reconsolidation to Extinction?Neuroscience bulletin · 2025Review
- Impaired interoception in Colombian victims of armed conflict with PTSD: a preliminary HEP study.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Integrating threat conditioning and the hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology to advance the study of anxiety-related psychopathology.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2024Review
- Semantic structures facilitate threat memory integration throughout the medial temporal lobe and medial prefrontal cortex.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
- REM disruption and REM Vagal Activity Predict Extinction Recall in Trauma-Exposed Individuals.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Facing ambiguity: Social threat sensitivity mediates the association between peer victimization and adolescent anxiety.Development and psychopathology · 2024Article
- Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A State-of-the-art Review.Current neuropharmacology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEstablishing neurobiological markers of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is essential to aid in diagnosis and treatment development. Fear processing deficits are central to PTSD, and their neural signatures may be used as such markers.
methodsHere, we conducted a meta-analysis of seven Pavlovian fear conditioning fMRI studies comparing 156 patients with PTSD and 148 trauma-exposed healthy controls (TEHC) using seed-based d-mapping, to contrast neural correlates of experimental phases, namely conditioning, extinction learning, and extinction recall.
resultsPatients with PTSD, as compared to TEHCs, exhibited increased activation in the anterior hippocampus (extending to the amygdala) and medial prefrontal cortex during conditioning; in the anterior hippocampus-amygdala regions during extinction learning; and in the anterior hippocampus-amygdala and medial prefrontal areas during extinction recall. Yet, patients with PTSD have shown an overall decreased activation in the thalamus during all phases in this meta-analysis.
conclusionFindings from this metanalysis suggest that PTSD is characterized by increased activation in areas related to salience and threat, and lower activation in the thalamus, a key relay hub between subcortical areas. If replicated, these fear network alterations may serve as objective diagnostic markers for PTSD, and potential targets for novel treatment development, including pharmacological and brain stimulation interventions. Future longitudinal studies are needed to examine whether these observed network alteration in PTSD are the cause or the consequence of PTSD.
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