Consensus design of a calibration experiment for human fear conditioning

Dominik R Bach; Juliana Sporrer; Rany Abend; Tom Beckers; Joseph E Dunsmoor; Miquel A Fullana; Matthias Gamer; Dylan G Gee; Alfons Hamm; Catherine A Hartley; Ryan J Herringa; Tanja Jovanovic; Raffael Kalisch; David C Knight; Shmuel Lissek; Tina B Lonsdorf; Christian J Merz; Mohammed Milad; Jayne Morriss; Elizabeth A Phelps; Daniel S Pine; Andreas Olsson; Carien M van Reekum; Daniela Schiller

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105146

Consensus design of a calibration experiment for human fear conditioning

Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2023 May:148:105146. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105146. Epub 2023 Mar 27.

Authors

Dominik R Bach¹, Juliana Sporrer², Rany Abend³, Tom Beckers⁴, Joseph E Dunsmoor⁵, Miquel A Fullana⁶, Matthias Gamer⁷, Dylan G Gee⁸, Alfons Hamm⁹, Catherine A Hartley¹⁰, Ryan J Herringa¹¹, Tanja Jovanovic¹², Raffael Kalisch¹³, David C Knight¹⁴, Shmuel Lissek¹⁵, Tina B Lonsdorf¹⁶, Christian J Merz¹⁷, Mohammed Milad¹⁸, Jayne Morriss¹⁹, Elizabeth A Phelps²⁰, Daniel S Pine³, Andreas Olsson²¹, Carien M van Reekum¹⁹, Daniela Schiller²²

Affiliations

¹ Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, University College London, United Kingdom; Hertz Chair for Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience, Transdisciplinary Research Area "Life & Health", University of Bonn, Germany. Electronic address: d.bach@uni-bonn.de.
² Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, University College London, United Kingdom.
³ National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program, Bethesda, MD, USA.
⁴ KU Leuven, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences/Leuven Brain Institute, Leuven, Belgium.
⁵ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, USA.
⁶ Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), CIBERSAM, & Adult Psychiatry and Psychology Department, Institute of Neurosciences, Hospital Clínic, Barcelona, Spain.
⁷ Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, Department of Psychology, Würzburg, Germany.
⁸ Yale University, Department of Psychology, New Haven, CT, USA.
⁹ Department of Psychology, University of Greifswald, Germany.
¹⁰ New York University, Department of Psychology, New York, NY, USA.
¹¹ Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine & Public Health, USA.
¹² Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA.
¹³ Neuroimaging Center (NIC), Focus Program Translational Neuroscience (FTN), Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center, Mainz, Germany; and Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research (LIR), Mainz, Germany.
¹⁴ University of Alabama at Birmingham, Department of Psychology, Birmingham, AL, USA.
¹⁵ Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research Program, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
¹⁶ University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Hamburg, Germany.
¹⁷ Ruhr University Bochum, Faculty of Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Bochum, Germany.
¹⁸ Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience Institute, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA; The Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY, USA.
¹⁹ School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, United Kingdom.
²⁰ Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 52 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA, USA.
²¹ Karolinska Institutet, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Psychology, Stockholm, Sweden.
²² Friedman Brain Institute, Department of Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, New York, NY, USA.

Abstract

Fear conditioning is a widely used laboratory model to investigate learning, memory, and psychopathology across species. The quantification of learning in this paradigm is heterogeneous in humans and psychometric properties of different quantification methods can be difficult to establish. To overcome this obstacle, calibration is a standard metrological procedure in which well-defined values of a latent variable are generated in an established experimental paradigm. These intended values then serve as validity criterion to rank methods. Here, we develop a calibration protocol for human fear conditioning. Based on a literature review, series of workshops, and survey of N = 96 experts, we propose a calibration experiment and settings for 25 design variables to calibrate the measurement of fear conditioning. Design variables were chosen to be as theory-free as possible and allow wide applicability in different experimental contexts. Besides establishing a specific calibration procedure, the general calibration process we outline may serve as a blueprint for calibration efforts in other subfields of behavioral neuroscience that need measurement refinement.

Keywords: Calibration design; Experiment-based calibration; Experimental design; Human fear conditioning; Measurement theory; Metrology; Multi-laboratory consensus.

Consensus design of a calibration experiment for human fear conditioning

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