A Standardized Protocol for Fear Extinction Enhancement Research
Abstract
For over a century, fear conditioning and extinction have served as a foundational model and laboratory protocol for studying how fear is learned and regulated in health and disorder. Several recent innovations in exposure treatments for anxiety-related psychopathology follow advances in fear extinction research. However, the field lacks a standardized protocol—critical given the many consequential parameters in conditioning protocols—that provides a benchmark standard for systematic research on how to improve exposure via enhanced extinction. Here, we present a standardized differential fear conditioning protocol based on international expert input via survey and initial multi-site validation data (n=196; 65% female). The protocol demonstrates expected patterns of fear acquisition and sufficient extinction and return of fear response needed for tests of enhanced extinction. The protocol is simple to implement and amenable to modification, providing an accessible tool for both field-domain experts and allied fields with interest in fear and anxiety.
Related
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- Selective Dopamine Transporter Inhibition with CE-123 Promotes Fear Extinction and Alters the Basolateral Amygdala Proteome Following Fear Extinction in Adolescent Male Rats
- Fear learning–induced brain dynamics predict individual extinction memory expression following transcranial magnetic stimulation
- Silencing basal forebrain cholinergic input to the infralimbic cortex renders fear extinction resistant to renewal
- Auricular vagus nerve stimulation facilitates contextual fear extinction via insular-mPFC pathway without affecting reconsolidation
BibTeX
@misc{kredlow2026standardized,
title = {{A Standardized Protocol for Fear Extinction Enhancement Research}},
author = {Xandra Kredlow and Meghan Whalen and Patrick Laing and Lingwei Ouyang and August C. Morgan and Samuel E Cooper and Bram Vervliet and Joseph E. Dunsmoor},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/dwh5b_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/dwh5b_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A Standardized Protocol for Fear Extinction Enhancement Research
AU - Xandra Kredlow
AU - Meghan Whalen
AU - Patrick Laing
AU - Lingwei Ouyang
AU - August C. Morgan
AU - Samuel E Cooper
AU - Bram Vervliet
AU - Joseph E. Dunsmoor
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/24
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/dwh5b_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/dwh5b_v1/
AB - For over a century, fear conditioning and extinction have served as a foundational model and laboratory protocol for studying how fear is learned and regulated in health and disorder. Several recent innovations in exposure treatments for anxiety-related psychopathology follow advances in fear extinction research. However, the field lacks a standardized protocol—critical given the many consequential parameters in conditioning protocols—that provides a benchmark standard for systematic research on how to improve exposure via enhanced extinction. Here, we present a standardized differential fear conditioning protocol based on international expert input via survey and initial multi-site validation data (n=196; 65% female). The protocol demonstrates expected patterns of fear acquisition and sufficient extinction and return of fear response needed for tests of enhanced extinction. The protocol is simple to implement and amenable to modification, providing an accessible tool for both field-domain experts and allied fields with interest in fear and anxiety.
ER -