Context conditioning in virtual reality as a model for pathological anxiety

Abstract

Phobic fear which is triggered by specif­ic stimuli can be modeled experimentally through cue conditioning. In contrast, con­text conditioning may serve as a model for anxiety which is longer lasting and unrelat­ed to cues. Such context conditioning can be studied in humans in analogy to animal stud­ies by using virtual reality (VR). Our VR con­text conditioning paradigm uses virtual offic­es as contexts. One office becomes the anxi­ety context since participants receive unpre­dictable mildly painful electric stimulations. The other office becomes the safety context because no aversive stimulation is delivered while participants explore this office. The va­lidity of the paradigm is indicated in the find­ings that after conditioning participants rate the virtual anxiety context as anxiety elicit­ing, avoid this context, and show startle po­tentiation in this context. Our studies fur­ther revealed that known risk factors for anx­iety disorders affect context conditioning. We found that enhanced trait anxiety facilitates contextual fear conditioning. In addition, we observed that individuals with genetic risks for anxiety disorders learn context condition­ing very effectively as shown in startle poten­tiation. These findings suggest that in individ­uals vulnerable to anxiety disorders such as panic disorder or posttraumatic stress disor­der, context conditioning may have contrib­uted to the development of these disorders.