Exposure Therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Factors of Limited Success and Possible Alternative Treatment

Overview

Journal Brain Sci

Publisher MDPI

Date 2020 Mar 19

PMID 32183089

Citations 10

Authors

Sara Markowitz

Michael Fanselow

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Recent research indicates that there is mixed success in using exposure therapies on patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Our study argues that there are two major reasons for this: The first is that there are nonassociative aspects of PTSD, such as hyperactive amygdala activity, that cannot be attenuated using the exposure therapy; The second is that exposure therapy is conceptualized from the theoretical framework of Pavlovian fear extinction, which we know is heavily context dependent. Thus, reducing fear response in a therapist's office does not guarantee reduced response in other situations. This study also discusses work relating to the role of the hippocampus in context encoding, and how these findings can be beneficial for improving exposure therapies.

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