PubMed · 14844552
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O H MOWRER, R R LAMOREAUX. 1951. Conditioning and conditionality (discrimination).. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0061399
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People differ in their personality traits and in their ability to modulate fear. Does our personality determine how well we extinguish conditioned fear responses? Or is the opposite true? Herein, we examine the relationships between personality traits, memory for fear extinction, and cortical thickness as a measure of brain structure. We found that in healthy humans, extinction retention and thickness of the medial orbitofrontal cortex are positively correlated with extraversion. Path analysis indicates that extinction retention mediates the relationship between the medial orbitofrontal cortex thickness and extraversion, thereby illustrating one path through which brain structure influences personality.
This paper describes a new protocol that addresses the question of whether, in human experiments, modulatory effects of remote nociceptive conditioning stimuli on reflex responses are mediated by the stress induced by the conditioning stimuli. The protocol has been illustrated by a study into the effect of a remote nociceptive conditioning stimulus on an inhibitory jaw reflex. Electromyograms were recorded from an active masseter muscle and inhibitory reflexes were evoked by applying electrical stimuli to the upper lip. This protocol utilised the application of discrete electrical conditioning stimuli applied to the sural nerve prior to the test stimulus. A preliminary experiment determined that the optimal interval between the conditioning and test stimuli, which produced modulatory effects was 100 ms. In the definitive study, computer software was used to deliver control and conditioned sweeps in a double-blind randomised sequence. This resulted in a "stress-equal" protocol in which the level of stress would be the same for both control and conditioned sweeps. Therefore any observed modulatory effects on the reflexes could not have been wholly secondary to stress. This protocol could be adapted to the study of the modulation of other reflexes or evoked sensations by nociceptive conditioning stimuli.
Contrary to some recent claims, the placebo effect is real and in some cases very substantial. Placebo effects can be produced or enhanced by classical conditioning, but consistent with virtually all contemporary conditioning theories, these effects are generally mediated by expectancy. Expectancy can also produce placebo effects that are inconsistent with conditioning history. Although expectancy also plays an important role in psychotherapy outcome, the logic of placebo-controlled trials does not map well onto psychotherapy research. The idea of evaluating the efficacy of psychotherapy by controlling for nonspecific or placebo factors is based on a flawed analogy and should be abandoned.