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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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TVNS-paired extinction facilitates subsequent extinction of fear 24 hours later. Upper Panel (a and b): Mean shock expectancy ratings averaged across blocks of two subsequent extinction test trials for the sham stimulation (blue) and tVNS condition (red) in the fear learning group (a: left) and in the control group (b: right). Error bars represent SEM. Fear learning group participants who underwent extinction training under tVNS showed facilitated subsequent extinction 24 hours after the extinction training, indicated by a stronger decrease in shock expectancy ratings in the tVNS relative to the sham condition (see a). No such effect was observed in the control group (see b). Lower Panel (c and d): Mean startle potentiation (standardized (T-scores) blink magnitudes elicited during the CS minus standardized (T-scores) blink magnitudes elicited during the inter-trial intervals) averaged across two probe stimuli presented during the subsequent extinction test. Potentiation scores are presented for the sham stimulation (blue) and the tVNS condition (red) in the fear learning group (c: left) and the control group (d: right). Again, error bars represent SEM. Subsequent extinction of fear potentiated startle was accelerated by tVNS relative to sham (see c). No such effect was observed in the control group (see d).