Fear processing in obesity and specifically the ability to i) learn and remember threatening stimuli, and ii) implicitly (i.e., unconsciously) and explicitly (consciously) discriminate them from neutral ones, will be investigated in affected individuals through the fear-conditioning paradigm.
Study Type
OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment
48
It is a 2-day paradigm. Participants will undergo an auditory fear conditioning task in 3 phases: (1) pre-conditioning habituation, (2) unconditioned stimulus (US) calibration, where USs will be delivered to set the individual stimulation intensity threshold, and (3) fear conditioning, in which participants will be exposed to the conditioned stimulus (CS) associated with the US with an 80% pairing rate. 24 hours later, the (1) implicit recognition of the CS and novel stimuli (NSs), and the (2) explicit recognition, through an alternative forced-choice task will be assessed. Also, (3) the perceptual discrimination (among the CS and NSs) will be tested. Event-related skin conductance responses (SCRs) will be collected as an implicit index of defensive fear responses, while the accuracy in detecting and discriminating the CS from NSs as the explicit index. Psychological questionnaires about anxiety symptoms will be also administered.
IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano - Ospedale San Giuseppe
Piancavallo, VCO, Italy
SCRs)
The event-related skin conductance responses (SCRs) in the case of the CS will be measured. This will represent the implicit index.
Time frame: Baseline
Recognition %
Level of accuracy (in %) in recognizing and discriminating the CS from NS will be computed. This will represent the explicit index.
Time frame: baseline
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