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. 2020 Jan 30;10:1529. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-58412-w

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© The Author(s) 2020

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation boosts extinction of fear potentiated startle responses late during extinction training. Mean startle potentiation scores (standardized (T-scores) blink magnitudes elicited during the CS minus standardized (T-scores) blink magnitudes elicited during the inter-trial intervals) averaged across the magnitudes elicited by the last two probes in either condition (CS and ITI) during extinction training. Potentiation scores are presented for the sham stimulation (blue) and the tVNS condition (red) in the fear learning group (a: left) and the control group (b: right). Error bars represent SEM. At the end of the extinction training blink magnitudes were no longer potentiated during CS trials relative to ITI in the tVNS condition of the fear learning group (a: red bar). However, potentiation persisted for fear learning group receiving sham stimulation (a: blue bar). TVNS had no impact on fear potentiated startle responses in the control group (b: right) at the end of the extinction training.