Associative learning and extinction of conditioned threat predictors across sensory modalities

Abstract

In order to further understand mechanisms of pain-related expectations by classical conditioning, Koenen et al. carried out fMRI studies in healthy human participants using paradigms that either combined interoceptive visceral pain with somatic pain, or with aversive tones as exteroceptive threats. They report that under both conditions interoceptive threat predictors were preferentially learned, consistently involved the insula and cingulate cortex, and had a greater impact on the disruption of expectation extinction.