Robust group- but limited individual-level (longitudinal) reliability and insights into cross-phases response prediction of conditioned fear

  1. Maren Klingelhöfer-Jens  Is a corresponding author
  2. Mana R Ehlers
  3. Manuel Kuhn
  4. Vincent Keyaniyan
  5. Tina B Lonsdorf
  1. University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
  2. Harvard Medical School, United States

Abstract

Here we follow the call to target measurement reliability as a key prerequisite for individual-level predictions in translational neuroscience by investigating i) longitudinal reliability at the individual and ii) group level, iii) internal consistency and iv) response predictability across experimental phases. 120 individuals performed a fear conditioning paradigm twice six months apart. Analyses of skin conductance responses, fear ratings and BOLD-fMRI with different data transformations and included numbers of trials were conducted. While longitudinal reliability was rather limited at the individual level, it was comparatively higher for acquisition but not extinction at the group-level. Internal consistency was satisfactory. Higher responding in preceding phases predicted higher responding in subsequent experimental phases at a weak to moderate level depending on data specifications. In sum, the results suggest that while individual-level predictions are meaningful for (very) short time frames, they also call for more attention to measurement properties in the field.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study and the R Markdown files that generate this manuscript are openly available in Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6359920.

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Maren Klingelhöfer-Jens

    Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
    For correspondence
    m.klingelhoefer-jens@uke.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-5393-7871
  2. Mana R Ehlers

    Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1316-3787
  3. Manuel Kuhn

    Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Vincent Keyaniyan

    Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Tina B Lonsdorf

    Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1501-4846

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (INST 211/633-2)

  • Manuel Kuhn

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (LO 1980/4-1)

  • Mana R Ehlers

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (LO 1980/7-1)

  • Vincent Keyaniyan

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Alexander Shackman, University of Maryland, United States

Ethics

Human subjects: All participants gave written informed consent to the protocol which was approved by the local ethics committee (PV 5157, Ethics Committee of the General Medical Council Hamburg). The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Version history

  1. Received: March 17, 2022
  2. Preprint posted: March 18, 2022 (view preprint)
  3. Accepted: September 12, 2022
  4. Accepted Manuscript published: September 13, 2022 (version 1)
  5. Accepted Manuscript updated: September 15, 2022 (version 2)
  6. Version of Record published: November 24, 2022 (version 3)

Copyright

© 2022, Klingelhöfer-Jens et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 692
    Page views
  • 140
    Downloads
  • 3
    Citations

Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: Crossref, PubMed Central, Scopus.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Maren Klingelhöfer-Jens
  2. Mana R Ehlers
  3. Manuel Kuhn
  4. Vincent Keyaniyan
  5. Tina B Lonsdorf
(2022)
Robust group- but limited individual-level (longitudinal) reliability and insights into cross-phases response prediction of conditioned fear
eLife 11:e78717.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78717

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78717

Further reading

    1. Neuroscience
    Kiwamu Kudo, Kamalini G Ranasinghe ... Srikantan S Nagarajan
    Research Article

    Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by the accumulation of amyloid-β and misfolded tau proteins causing synaptic dysfunction, and progressive neurodegeneration and cognitive decline. Altered neural oscillations have been consistently demonstrated in AD. However, the trajectories of abnormal neural oscillations in AD progression and their relationship to neurodegeneration and cognitive decline are unknown. Here, we deployed robust event-based sequencing models (EBMs) to investigate the trajectories of long-range and local neural synchrony across AD stages, estimated from resting-state magnetoencephalography. The increases in neural synchrony in the delta-theta band and the decreases in the alpha and beta bands showed progressive changes throughout the stages of the EBM. Decreases in alpha and beta band synchrony preceded both neurodegeneration and cognitive decline, indicating that frequency-specific neuronal synchrony abnormalities are early manifestations of AD pathophysiology. The long-range synchrony effects were greater than the local synchrony, indicating a greater sensitivity of connectivity metrics involving multiple regions of the brain. These results demonstrate the evolution of functional neuronal deficits along the sequence of AD progression.

    1. Medicine
    2. Neuroscience
    Luisa Fassi, Shachar Hochman ... Roi Cohen Kadosh
    Research Article

    In recent years, there has been debate about the effectiveness of treatments from different fields, such as neurostimulation, neurofeedback, brain training, and pharmacotherapy. This debate has been fuelled by contradictory and nuanced experimental findings. Notably, the effectiveness of a given treatment is commonly evaluated by comparing the effect of the active treatment versus the placebo on human health and/or behaviour. However, this approach neglects the individual’s subjective experience of the type of treatment she or he received in establishing treatment efficacy. Here, we show that individual differences in subjective treatment - the thought of receiving the active or placebo condition during an experiment - can explain variability in outcomes better than the actual treatment. We analysed four independent datasets (N = 387 participants), including clinical patients and healthy adults from different age groups who were exposed to different neurostimulation treatments (transcranial magnetic stimulation: Studies 1 and 2; transcranial direct current stimulation: Studies 3 and 4). Our findings show that the inclusion of subjective treatment can provide a better model fit either alone or in interaction with objective treatment (defined as the condition to which participants are assigned in the experiment). These results demonstrate the significant contribution of subjective experience in explaining the variability of clinical, cognitive, and behavioural outcomes. We advocate for existing and future studies in clinical and non-clinical research to start accounting for participants’ subjective beliefs and their interplay with objective treatment when assessing the efficacy of treatments. This approach will be crucial in providing a more accurate estimation of the treatment effect and its source, allowing the development of effective and reproducible interventions.