Abstract
Background
Fear-related disorders are characterized by hyperexcitability in reflexive circuits
and maladaptive associative learning mechanisms. The startle reflex is suited to investigate
both processes, either by probing it under baseline conditions or by deriving it in
fear conditioning studies. In anxiety research, the amplitude of the fear-potentiated
startle has been shown to be influenced by amygdalar circuits and has typically been
the readout of interest. In schizophrenia research, prolonged startle peak latency
under neutral conditions is an established readout, thought to reflect impaired processing
speed. We therefore explored whether startle latency is an informative readout for
human anxiety research.
Methods
We investigated potential similarities and differences of startle peak latency and
amplitude derived from a classical fear conditioning task in a sample of 206 participants
with varying severity levels of anxiety disorders and healthy control subjects. We
first reduced startle response to stable components and regressed individual amygdala
gray matter volumes onto the resulting startle measures. We then probed time, stimulus,
and group effects of startle latency.
Results
We showed that startle latency and startle amplitude were 2 largely uncorrelated measures;
startle latency, but not amplitude, showed a sex-specific association with gray matter
volume of the amygdala; startle latencies showed a fear-dependent task modulation;
and patients with fear-related disorders displayed shorter startle latencies throughout
the fear learning task.
Conclusions
These data provide support for the notion that probing startle latencies under threat
may engage amygdala-modulated threat processing, making them a complementary marker
for human anxiety research.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 13, 2022
Accepted:
April 27,
2022
Received in revised form:
April 26,
2022
Received:
January 21,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Journal Pre-ProofFootnotes
The BeCOME working group includes Elisabeth B. Binder1, Tanja M. Brückl1, Angelika Erhardt2, Norma C. Grandi2, Susanne. Lucae2, Iven A. von Muecke-Heim2, and Julius Ziebula2
1Department of Translational Research in Psychiatry, 2Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany.
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 Society of Biological Psychiatry.
