Robust group- but limited individual-level (longitudinal) reliability and insights into cross-phases response prediction of conditioned fear
- University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
- 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.
Article and author information
Author details
Maren Klingelhöfer-Jens
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.
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.
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.
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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
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