PMID- 22832657 OWN - NLM STAT- MEDLINE DCOM- 20130404 LR - 20211021 IS - 2158-3188 (Electronic) IS - 2158-3188 (Linking) VI - 1 IP - 9 DP - 2011 Sep 20 TI - A review on experimental and clinical genetic associations studies on fear conditioning, extinction and cognitive-behavioral treatment. PG - e41 LID - 10.1038/tp.2011.36 [doi] AB - Fear conditioning and extinction represent basic forms of associative learning with considerable clinical relevance and have been implicated in the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders. There is considerable inter-individual variation in the ability to acquire and extinguish conditioned fear reactions and the study of genetic variants has recently become a focus of research. In this review, we give an overview of the existing genetic association studies on human fear conditioning and extinction in healthy individuals and of related studies on cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) and exposure, as well as pathology development after trauma. Variation in the serotonin transporter (5HTT) and the catechol-o-methyltransferase (COMT) genes has consistently been associated with effects in pre-clinical and clinical studies. Interesting new findings, which however require further replication, have been reported for genetic variation in the dopamine transporter (DAT1) and the pituitary adenylate cyclase 1 receptor (ADCYAP1R1) genes, whereas the current picture is inconsistent for variation in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene. We end with a discussion of the findings and their limitations, as well as future directions that we hope will aid the field to develop further. FAU - Lonsdorf, T B AU - Lonsdorf TB AD - Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Hamburg, Germany. t.lonsdorf@uke.uni-hamburg.de FAU - Kalisch, R AU - Kalisch R LA - eng PT - Journal Article PT - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't PT - Review DEP - 20110920 PL - United States TA - Transl Psychiatry JT - Translational psychiatry JID - 101562664 SB - IM MH - Anxiety Disorders/*genetics/psychology MH - Conditioning, Psychological/*physiology MH - Extinction, Psychological/*physiology MH - Fear/*physiology MH - *Genetic Association Studies MH - Humans MH - Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic/*genetics/psychology PMC - PMC3309482 EDAT- 2011/01/01 00:00 MHDA- 2013/04/05 06:00 PMCR- 2011/09/01 CRDT- 2012/07/27 06:00 PHST- 2012/07/27 06:00 [entrez] PHST- 2011/01/01 00:00 [pubmed] PHST- 2013/04/05 06:00 [medline] PHST- 2011/09/01 00:00 [pmc-release] AID - tp201136 [pii] AID - 10.1038/tp.2011.36 [doi] PST - epublish SO - Transl Psychiatry. 2011 Sep 20;1(9):e41. doi: 10.1038/tp.2011.36.