Topic: unconditioned stimulus

There is a considerable number of patients (19% to 62%) that experience a relapse of fear after completing extinction-based therapy. Patients with anxiety disorders (AD) and highly anxious individuals show accelerated fear conditioning and diminished fear extinction, highlighting the necessity of improving extinction learning in AD patients. Instructions given prior to extinction training, stating that the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) will not be presented anymore, have been shown to improve extinction learning. Furthermore, it has been shown that relapse of fear can be reduced by repeating th