小泉研究員がSociety for Neuroscience (SfN)にて発表した内容が、Newsweekに取り上げられました。
Neuroscientists Reveal Novel Ways to Tackle Your Fears
https://www.newsweek.com/neuroscientists-novel-fears-vr-phobias-1842428
小泉研究員は11/11-11/15にワシントンD.C.で開催されているNeuroscience 2023でもポスターにて以下の発表しています。
Title: Fear in action: Fear conditioning and alleviation through body movements
Abstract: Acquisition of fear memories enhances survival especially when the memories guide defensive movements to minimize harm. Accordingly, fear memories and body movements have tight relationships in animals: Fear memory acquisition results in adapting reactive defense movements, while training active defensive body movements to avoid threat reduces fear memory. However, evidence in humans is scarce because their movements are typically marginalized in experiments. In the present study, we tracked participants’whole-body motions while they underwent fear conditioning in a virtual 3D space. First, representational similarity analysis of body motions revealed that participants obtained distinct spatiotemporal movement patterns through fear conditioning. Second, subsequent training to actively avoid threats with naturalistic defensive actions led to a long-term (24 hrs) reduction of physiological and embodied conditioned responses, while passive extinction or vicarious training only transiently reduced the responses followed by their spontaneous return. Together, our results highlight the intrinsic role of body movements in human fear memory functions, suggesting the potential for improving fear memory interventions through embodiment.
The content presented by Researcher Koizumi at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) has been covered by Newsweek.
Neuroscientists Reveal Novel Ways to Tackle Your Fears
https://www.newsweek.com/neuroscientists-novel-fears-vr-phobias-1842428
Dr. Koizumi also presented the following in a poster at Neuroscience 2023, 11/11-11/15 in Washington, D.C.
Title: Fear in action: Fear conditioning and alleviation through body movements
Abstract: Acquisition of fear memories enhances survival especially when the memories guide defensive movements to minimize harm. Accordingly, fear memories and body movements have tight relationships in animals: Fear memory acquisition results in adapting reactive defense movements, while training active defensive body movements to avoid threat reduces fear memory. However, evidence in humans is scarce because their movements are typically marginalized in experiments. In the present study, we tracked participants’whole-body motions while they underwent fear conditioning in a virtual 3D space. First, representational similarity analysis of body motions revealed that participants obtained distinct spatiotemporal movement patterns through fear conditioning. Second, subsequent training to actively avoid threats with naturalistic defensive actions led to a long-term (24 hrs) reduction of physiological and embodied conditioned responses, while passive extinction or vicarious training only transiently reduced the responses followed by their spontaneous return. Together, our results highlight the intrinsic role of body movements in human fear memory functions, suggesting the potential for improving fear memory interventions through embodiment.
