Resistance to extinction of evaluative fear conditioning in delusion proneness

Abstract Delusional beliefs consist of strong priors characterized by resistance to change even when evidence supporting another view is overwhelming. Such bias against disconfirmatory (BADE) has been experimentally demonstrated in patients with psychosis as well delusion proneness. In this fMRI-study, we tested for similar and associated brain processes extinction fear learning, involving a well-described mechanism dependent updating. A social conditioning paradigm was used which four faces had either coupled an unconditioned aversive stimulus (CS+) or not (CS?). For two the faces, instructions given about contingencies (iCS+/iCS?) while other no such (niCS+/niCS?). Interaction analysis suggested that individuals who score high on delusion-proneness (hDP; n = 20) displayed less evaluative compared those low proneness (lDP; 23; 19 fMRI-analysis) non-instructed (F 5.469, P .024). The supported difference related activity between groups medial prefrontal cortex its connectivity amygdala, cortical network processing. instructed noted, but there larger 5.048, 0.03) increased functional lateral orbitofrontal processing regions hDP than lDP. Our study links previous explored BADE-effects phenotypes extinction, suggest effects learning are more pronounced prone subjects.