Predicting extinction phenotype to optimize fear reduction

Fear conditioning is widely employed to study dysregulations of the fear system. The repeated presentation of a conditioned stimulus in the absence of a reinforcer leads to a decrease in fear responding—a phenomenon known as extinction. From a translational perspective, identifying whether an individual might respond well to extinction prior to intervention could prove important to treatment outcomes. Here, we test the hypothesis that CO 2 reactivity predicts extinction phenotype in rats, and that variability in CO 2 reactivity as well as extinction long-term memory (LTM) significantly predicts orexin activity in the lateral hypothalamus (LH). Our results validate a rat model of CO 2 reactivity and show that subcomponents of behavioral reactivity following acute CO 2 exposure explain a significant portion of the variance in extinction LTM. Furthermore, we show evidence that variability in CO 2 reactivity is also significantly predictive of orexin activity in the LH, and that orexin activity, in turn, significantly accounts for LTM variance. Our findings open the possibility that we may be able to use CO 2 reactivity as a screening tool to determine if individuals are good candidates for an extinction/exposure-based approach.