Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The dyadic relationship between a parent and child is a critical facilitator of social learning, particularly in the management of fear. Vicarious extinction, the process of learning by observing a parent extinguish learned threat responses, holds critical translational potential in understanding adolescent psychopathology involving aberrant threat responses. However, biological profiles of vicarious extinction irrespective of psychopathology have yet to be uncovered. Here, a community-representative sample of 97 parent-child dyads, enriched for trauma-exposure, completed a validated vicarious extinction paradigm. Youth completed all phases during functional magnetic resonance imaging, while caregivers simultaneously completed the behavioral task. Linear models interrogating behavioral, physiological, and neural correlates of acquisition and direct and vicarious extinction, controlled for trauma and symptom severity. The degree of parent-child autonomic synchrony was used to predict the strength of extinction learning. Youth behavioral and skin conductance response markers suggest successful threat acquisition and direct and vicarious extinction. Autonomic arousal during active vicarious extinction learning processes was significantly associated with the strength of parent-child synchrony. Neural activation analyses reveal patterns of early encoding of threat and safety discrimination that were reactivated during later threat reinstatement. Finally, results corroborate and expand known models of direct and vicarious extinction, respectively involving the ventromedial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Altogether, this data confirms that youth can directly and vicariously modify learned threat associations with distinct neurobiological profiles. This delineation of vicarious extinction neural circuitry within a representative population is pivotal for understanding how these processes may be altered by the environment and/or psychopathology during adolescence.
Source: Scientific Reports
Authors: Sara A. Heyn, Ryan J. Herringa
Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison
Language: English
Topic: Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,690
Funders: National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, National Institutes of Health, Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
Awards: G115506582, Neurobehavioral mechanisms of parent-child extinction learning in adolescent PTSD, G2202504147, G314171798, G3347244374, G3676901285, Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Award, G696271718, Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Award, G7622855602, G8629884362
OpenAlex ID: W4417027271