Fear reinstatement is one of several paradigms designed to measure fear return following extinction, as a laboratory model for the relapse of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Sleep is a key factor in emotional memory consolidation, and here we examined the relationship between sleep quality and fear reinstatement in PTSD, relative to trauma-exposed and non-exposed controls. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used as a subjective measure of sleep quality, and skin conductance responses (SCR) and unconditioned stimulus (US)-expectancy ratings were used to index threat responses during a differential fear conditioning, extinction, and reinstatement paradigm. There were no significant between-group differences in the reinstatement of conditioned responding. Sleep disturbance and sleep onset latency were significant moderators between reinstatement of fear and PTSD symptom severity, such that there was a positive relationship between PTSD symptoms and fear reinstatement for higher levels - but not lower levels - of sleep disturbance and sleep onset latency. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate PTSD-specific reinstatement patterns and sleep as a boundary condition of reinstatement. Future research using polysomnographic measures of sleep-wave architecture may further clarify the relationship between fear reinstatement and sleep quality in clinical samples with PTSD relative to controls.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Psychology
Research Group:	Biological psychology
Research Field:	Behavioural neuroscience
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding knowledge in psychology
UTAS Author:	Zuj, DV (Dr Daniel Zuj)
UTAS Author:	Palmer, MA (Associate Professor Matt Palmer)
ID Code:	132006
Year Published:	2018
Web of Science® Times Cited:	12
Deposited By:	Office of the School of Medicine
Deposited On:	2019-04-16
Last Modified:	2019-05-06
Downloads:	0