DOI: 10.5061/dryad.bcc2fqzj3
title: Fear in action: Fear conditioning and alleviation through body movements

description: Fear memories enhance survival especially when the memories guide
 defensive movements to minimize harm. Accordingly, fear memories and body
 movements have tight relationships in animals: Fear memory acquisition
 results in adapting reactive defense movements, while training active
 defense movements reduces fear memory. However, evidence in humans is
 scarce because their movements are typically suppressed in experiments.
 Here, we tracked adult participants’ body motions while they underwent
 ecologically-valid fear conditioning in a 3D virtual space. First, with
 body motion tracking, we revealed that distinct spatiotemporal body
 movement patterns emerge through fear conditioning. Second, subsequent
 training to actively avoid threats with naturalistic defensive actions led
 to a long-term (24 hrs) reduction of physiological and embodied
 conditioned responses, while extinction or vicarious training only
 transiently reduced the responses. Together, our results highlight the
 role of body movements in human fear memory and its intervention.
description: We conducted experiments across three consecutive days. On day 1,
 41 participants (Group 1) underwent a naturalistic threat conditioning
 session in an unconstrained standing posture inside a virtual elevator. On
 day 2, participants underwent embodied active- avoidance training (ACT
 training) where they could defend themselves with a security spray to
 prevent violence (US) from one of the CS+ avatars. On day 3, participants
 encountered both CS+active and CS+extinction avatars without violence and
 we tested for the return of threat-conditioned responses in the
 spontaneous recovery test session.  
 To further elucidate the spatio-temporal dynamics of embodied CRs
 across the entire body, a second group of 54 participants (Group 2)
 completed the same conditioning session as Group 1 with an addition of a
 whole-body motion tracking system 
 Along with
 physiological defensive reactions as measured with skin conductance
 responses (SCR) and subjective ratings of fear and violence-likelihood,
 the body movements of the participants were tracked with the VR
 head-mount-display and hand-held controller (Group 1) or with a full-body
 motion system (Group2).
description: # Dataset for "Fear in action: Fear conditioning and alleviation
 through body movements" ## Overview This dataset contains 1.
 Subjective rates, 2. SCR and 3. Body movements data for Group 1 and Group
 2 and the corresponding sessions and conditions. Data is organized in
 three main folders that correspond to the three measures. The files are in
 .mat. Additionally, the Dataset contains the original codes for analysis.
 See specifications below. ## Folders organization ### 1. Subjective rates
 Contains 2 .mat files: 1. subj_rates_group1.mat 2. subj_rates_group1.mat
 (self\_ corresponds to Self group; third\_ corresponds to Vicarious group)
 Each .mat includes the subjective ratings for fear (fear_) and
 US-anticipation (vio_) for each session (one variable per session):
 pre_acq; post_acq; post_aa/ext; post_test1/2; post_recond. *acq=fear
 conditioning; *aa=Active Avoidance; *ext=Extinction; Each variable
 contains 3 columns corresponding to the 3 conditions: a. CS+ Active
 Avoidance; b. CS+ Extinction; c. CS-; and each row corresponds to a
 subject. ### 2. SCR Contains 2 folders: Group1 and Group 2. Each folder
 contains one .mat file per subject. Each .mat includes the raw SCR data
 for all the trials of each session and condition. Each variable contains
 as many columns as trials. ### 3. Body movements Contains 2 folders:
 Group1 and Group 2. * Group 1 folder contains one .mat file per subject.
 Each .mat includes the raw body movement data for all trials of each
 session (acq and test) and condition (A_S, B_S, C_S). There are 6
 parameters for head and hand: Position X, Y, Z and Rotation X, Y , Z. *
 Group 2 folder contains 2 folders: acquisition and test. Each folder
 contains one .mat file per subject. Each .mat includes the raw body
 movement data for the corresponding session and for each condition (A_S,
 B_S, C_S). There are 117 parameters corresponding to the 117 body markers
 that constitute the whole-body motion tracking system. ### 4. Codes * RSA
 analysis