Program

Understanding fundamental threat responses is crucial for improving therapeutic applications for various psychopathologies. Exploring their neural correlates offers a unique perspective on adaptive threat responses and their dysfunctions. This symposium examines fear learning, generalization, and extinction processes, highlighting their underlying neural mechanisms as well as the influence of contextual factors and psychopathologies. Specifically, Bierwirth et al. will present data on the neurophysiological correlates of prediction errors during the acquisition and extinction of fear memories. Stegmann et al. will address how aversive contexts impact visuocortical correlates of sustained attention during generalized threat, showing that competing attentional demands related to cue- and context-responses are segregated into different neural harmonics. Prantner et al. will explore the magnetoencephalographic correlates of a conditioning paradigm in patients with spider phobia compared to healthy controls, focusing on differential behavioral and neural processing in relation to the phobia relevance of the conditioned stimulus and fear generalization. Espino-Payá et al. will investigate the role of classical conditioning in tinnitus distress, demonstrating that tinnitus patients exhibit maladaptive aversive learning across both auditory and visual domains, along with evidence for an impaired auditory threat inhibition in prefrontal regions. Together, this symposium provides valuable insights into the neural mechanisms underlying defense behaviors and how they are influenced by contextual factors and individual differences. Additionally, it highlights the impact of dysfunctional threat processing on fear and anxiety, offering a deeper understanding of the mechanisms contributing to psychopathology and potential avenues for therapeutic intervention.