SynthesiseLife2019
Navigating the garden of forking paths for data exclusions in fear conditioning research.
Synthesis in eLife, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers.
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
54 citing papers in PubMed, 168 citations in OpenAlex.
- REM sleep reduction leads to fear overgeneralization via negatively modulating prefrontal theta oscillations.BMC medicine · 2025Trial
- Trial
- Distinct Visual Pathways of Threat Retrieval in Fear-Conditioned Faces.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- A ventral striatal learning signal reflecting individual differences in the success of fear extinction.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- The physiological foundation of extinction improvement by tDCS over the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in healthy humans: an fMRI study.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Imagery-based fear conditioning enhances the late positive potential.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Augmenting extinction with counterconditioning strengthens and sustains neural safety representations in PTSD.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Experimentally induced REM sleep fragmentation affects psychophysiological habituation to emotional stimuli.Sleep · 2026Article
- How Temporal Predictability of Threat and Action Preparation Affect Defensive Freezing Responses.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Increased generalisation in trait anxiety is driven by aversive value transfer.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Periodontitis and Systemic Disease: The Impact of Covariate Selection.Journal of dental research · 2026Article
- Developmental differences in threat learning are associated with changes in frontal-central theta activity.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- Understanding the Role of Endocannabinoids in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Utilizing rewards to dampen fear and its recovery.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Genetic and Environmental Influences on Fear Learning and Generalization.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Generalized expectancy of threat in threatening compared to safe contexts.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Stage 2 Registered Report: Propositional Thought Is Sufficient for Imaginal Extinction as Shown by Contrasting Participants With Aphantasia, Simulated Aphantasia, and Controls.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Cortisol Imbalance and Fear Learning in PTSD: Therapeutic Approaches to Control Abnormal Fear Responses.Current neuropharmacology · 2025Review
- Semantic structures facilitate threat memory integration throughout the medial temporal lobe and medial prefrontal cortex.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors at 8 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In this report, we illustrate the considerable impact of researcher degrees of freedom with respect to exclusion of participants in paradigms with a learning element. We illustrate this empirically through case examples from human fear conditioning research, in which the exclusion of 'non-learners' and 'non-responders' is common - despite a lack of consensus on how to define these groups. We illustrate the substantial heterogeneity in exclusion criteria identified in a systematic literature search and highlight the potential problems and pitfalls of different definitions through case examples based on re-analyses of existing data sets. On the basis of these studies, we propose a consensus on evidence-based rather than idiosyncratic criteria, including clear guidelines on reporting details. Taken together, we illustrate how flexibility in data collection and analysis can be avoided, which will benefit the robustness and replicability of research findings and can be expected to be applicable to other fields of research that involve a learning element.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.