The causal role of affect sharing in driving vicarious fear learning

The role of external factors in affect-sharing and their neural bases

Affect-sharing, the ability to vicariously feel another person's emotions, is the primary component of empathy that is typically thought to rely on the observer's capacity to feel the emotions of others. However, external signals, such as the target's physical characteristics, have been demonstrated to influence affect-sharing in the neuroscientific literature that speaks to the underappreciated role of external factors in eliciting affect-sharing. We consider factors that influence affect-sharing, including physical cues, emotional cues, situational factors, and observer-target relationships, as well as the neural circuits involved in these processes. Our review reveals that, while neural network activation is primarily responsible for processing affect-sharing, external factors also co-activate a top-down cognitive processing network to modulate the conscious process of affect-sharing. From this knowledge, an integrative framework of external factor interactions with affect-sharing are explained in detail. Finally, we identify critical areas for future research in social and affective neuroscience, including research gaps and incorporation of ecologically valid paradigms.

The next frontier: Moving human fear conditioning research online

Fear conditioning is a significant area of research that has featured prominently among the topics published in Biological Psychology over the last 50 years. This work has greatly contributed to our understanding of human anxiety and stressor-related disorders. While mainly conducted in the laboratory, recently, there have been initial attempts to conduct fear conditioning experiments online, with around 10 studies published on the subject, primarily in the last two years. These studies have demonstrated the potential of online fear conditioning research, although challenges to ensure that this research meets the same methodological standards as in-person experimentation remain, despite recent progress. We expect that in the coming years new outcome measures will become available online including the measurement of eye-tracking, pupillometry and probe reaction time and that compliance monitoring will be improved. This exciting new approach opens new possibilities for large-scale data collection among hard-to-reach populations and has the potential to transform the future of fear conditioning research.

Learning from others' experience: Social fear conditioning deficits in patients with severe alcohol use disorder

BACKGROUND

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a significant public health problem. A better understanding of the psychosocial factors contributing to AUD is important for developing public health policy. The purpose of this study was to identify social mechanisms involved in AUD and, more specifically, to determine whether vicarious learning deficits are related to the disorder. A secondary objective was to evaluate the role of empathy in social fear conditioning.

METHODS

Patients with severe AUD (n = 30) and healthy participants (n = 30) performed a social fear learning (SFL) task. The task assesses how an association between a stimulus and an aversive consequence is acquired through social means. Specifically, participants observed a person receiving an electric shock (unconditioned stimulus; US) that was associated (conditioned stimulus; CS+) or not (CS-) with a neutral CS. The skin conductance response was used to measure the effect of learning.

RESULTS

Individuals with severe AUD showed a deficit in SFL, indicating that they had difficulty learning from another's negative experience. Patients also evaluated the emotional experience as less unpleasant than healthy participants.

CONCLUSIONS

This study is the first to show that patients with severe AUD have social learning deficits. The findings suggest that these individuals do not learn from another's negative experience. At a fundamental level, the findings demonstrate the importance of understanding the role of social mechanisms in AUD. At a clinical level, the study highlights the potential for using social learning enhancement to prevent relapse in individuals with severe AUD.