View clinical trials related to Fear of Spiders.
Filter by:Imaginal exposure is a widely used and effective psychological treatment technique. Recent research suggests that neural activations and emotional responses during imaginal exposure are similar to those elicited during in vivo exposure. However, to the investigators knowledge, no direct comparison between in vivo and imaginal exposure has been performed during neuroimaging. This study compares neural activations and emotional responses during imaginal and in vivo exposure. This study also explores the generalizability of fear reduction achieved through imaginal exposure to fear responses elicited by in vivo stimuli, and vice versa, in a follow-up session approximately one week later. A better understanding of the mechanisms behind both types of exposure could have significant clinical utility, as well as elucidate the differences between fear created from outward stimuli and fear created from inward stimuli, such as mental imagery.
Imaginal exposure is a widely used and effective psychological treatment technique in which patients are exposed to fearful stimuli and situations using mental imagery. This study examines imaginal extinction, an experimental analogue of imaginal exposure that allows the study of this treatment technique under controlled circumstances. During imaginal extinction, conditioned fear is diminished through repeated exposure to mental imagery of the feared (conditioned) stimulus. The neural underpinnings of imaginal extinction is not known, and hence, this study examines neural activations during imaginal extinction using psychophysiology and brain imaging.