Armita Törngren GolkarAssociate Professor
About me
My overall research aim is to better understand the processes that govern emotional learning and regulation in social contexts. More specifically, I focus on the processes underlying fear and safety learning accomplished through own direct experience and through social means such as instruction, observation and interaction with others. I address these issues using different methods including behavioral, psychophysiological and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
For an updated list of publications see Google scholar.
Bio
I defended my PhD thesis in 2013 at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet under the supervision of Professor Arne Öhman. I continued my research as a postdoctoral fellow at the Karolinska Institutets emotionlab (2013-2015), after which I received a three-year international postdoctoral grant from the Swedish Research Council (2015-2018). Since Aug 2019, I am an Associate Professor at Stockholm University and an affiliated researcher at Karolinska Institutet. My research is supported by the Swedish Research Council and Knut och Alice Wallenberg foundation (Wallenberg Academy Fellow grant).
Dissertation
Learning not to fear: Extinction, erasure, and the recovery of fear memories. Doctoral dissertation from the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet. ISBN 978-91-7549-029-8
Awards and honors
Wallenberg Academy Fellow (since 2021), a carreer programme that provides long-term funding for the most promising young researchers of all disciplines.
Awarded the Outstanding young researcher in Psychology award (2015) by the Swedish National Committee for Psychological Sciences, Royal Academy of Sciences.
Awarded the Best thesis of the year award (2013). Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet.
Publications
Yafeng, P., Olsson, A., Golkar, A (2020). Social safety learning: Shared safety abolishes the recovery of learned threat. Behavioral Research and Therapy, 135, 103733.
Lindström, B.R., Golkar, A., Olsson, A. (2019). Social threat learning transfers to decision making in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (10).
Tamm, S., Nilsonne, G., Schwartz, J., Golkar, A., Kecklund, G., Petrovic, P., Fischer, H., Åkerstedt, T., Lekander, M. (2019). Sleep restriction caused impaired emotional regulation without detectable brain activation changes-a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Royal Society Open Science, 6(3).
Golkar, A., & Olsson, A. (2017). The interplay between social group biases in social threat learning. Scientific Reports, 7(1):7685.
Haaker, J*., Golkar, A*., Selbing, I*., & Olsson, A. (2017). Assessing social transmission of threats in humans using the observational fear conditioning procedure. Nature protocols, 12, 1378-1386. * = Equal contribution.
Golkar, A., Tjaden, C., & Kindt, M. (2017). Vicarious extinction during reconsolidation neutralizes fear memory. Behavior Research and Therapy, 22, 87-93.
Nilsonne, G., Tamm, S., Golkar, A., Sörman, K., Howner, K., Kristiansson, M., Olsson, A., Ingvar, M., & Petrovic, P. (2017). Effects of 25 mg oxazepam on emotional mimicry and empathy for pain: a randomized controlled experiment. Royal Society Open Science, 4(3):160607.
Lonsdorf, T.B., Menz, M.M., Andreatta, M., Fullana, M.A., Golkar, A., Haaker, J., Heitland, I., Hermann, A., Kuhn, M., Kruse, O., Drexler, S.M., Meulders, A.0, Nees, F., Pittig, A., Richter, J., Römer, S., Shiban, Y., Schmitz, A., Straube, B., Vervliet, B., Wendt, J., Baas, J.M., & Merz, C.J. (2017). Don't fear 'fear conditioning': Methodological considerations for the design and analysis of studies on human fear acquisition, extinction, and return of fear. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 77, 247-285.
Golkar, A., Haaker, J., Selbing, I., & Olsson, A. (2016). Neural signals of vicarious extinction learning. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11, 1541-9.
Golkar, A., & Olsson, A. (2016). Immunization against social fear learning. Journal of Experimental psychology: General, 145, 665-71.
Molapour, T., Golkar, A., Navarrete, C.D., Haaker, J., & Olsson, A. (2015). Neural correlates of biased fear learning and social interaction in an intergroup context. NeuroImage, 121, 171-83.
Petrovic, P., Ekman, C-J., Klahr, J., Tigerström, L., Rydén, G., Golkar, A., Olsson, A., Öhman, A., Ingvar, M., & Landén, M. (2015). Significant gray matter changes in a region of the orbitofrontal cortex in healthy participants predicts emotional dysregulation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. PMID: 26078386
Golkar, A., Björnstjerna, M., & Olsson, A. (2015). Learned fear to social out-group members are determined by ethnicity and prior exposure. Frontiers in Psychology, 16(6).
Lindström, B., Golkar, A., & Olsson, A. (2015). A clash of values: Fear-relevant stimuli can enhance or corrupt adaptive behavior through competition between Pavlovian and instrumental valuation systems. Emotion, 15(5), 668-676. doi: 10.1037/emo0000075.
Golkar, A., Castro, V., & Olsson A. (2015). Social learning of fear and safety is determined by the demonstrator’s racial group. Biology letters, 11(1).
Golkar, A., Johansson, E., Kasahara, M., Osika, W., Perski, & Savic, I. (2014). The influence of work-related chronic stress on regulation of emotion, and on functional connections in the brain. PlosOne, 9(9).
Haaker, J., Golkar, A., Dirkx., H., & Lonsdorf, T.B. (2014). A critical review on human reinstatement studies: An overview and methodological challenges. Learning & Memory, 21(9).
Lonsdorf, T.B., Golkar, A., Lindstrom, K.M., Haaker, J., Schalling, M., Öhman, A., & Ingvar, M. (2014). BDNFval66met affects neural activation pattern during fear conditioning and early extinction. Social Cognitive and Affective Sciences, 10(5), 664–671. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsu102.
Lindström, B., Mattson-Berglund, I., Golkar, A., & Olsson, A. (2013). In your face: Risk of punishment enhances cognitive control and error-related activity in the corrugator supercilii muscle. PLoS ONE, 8(6).
Golkar, A., Selbing, I., Flygare, O., Öhman, A., & Olsson, A. (2013). Others as means to a safe end: Vicarious extinction blocks the return of learned fear. Psychological Science, 24(11).
Golkar, A., Bellander, M., Olsson, A., & Öhman, A. (2012). Are fear memories erasable? Reconsolidation of learned fear with fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 6(80).
Golkar, A., Bellander, M., & Öhman, A. (2012). Temporal properties of fear extinction - does time matter? Behavioral Neuroscience, 127(1).
Golkar, A., Lonsdorf, T.B., Olsson, A., Lindstrom, K., Berrebi, J., Fransson, P., Schalling, M., Ingvar, M., & Öhman, A. (2012). Distinct contributions of the dorsolateral and orbitofrontal cortex during emotion regulation. PLoS ONE, 7(11).
Golkar, A., & Öhman A. (2012). Fear Extinction in Humans: Effects of Acquisition-Extinction Delay and Masked Stimulus Presentations. Biological Psychology, 91(2).
Peira, N., Golkar, A., Öhman, A., Anders, S., & Wiens, S. (2011). Emotional responses in spider fear are closely related to picture awareness. Cognition and Emotion, 26(2), 252-260.
Lonsdorf, T.B., Golkar, A., Lindström, K.M., Fransson, P., Öhman, A., & Ingvar, M. (2011). 5-HTTLPR and COMTval158met genotype independently gate amygdala activity during passive viewing of angry faces. Biological Psychology, 87(1), 106-112.
Peira, N., Golkar, A., Larsson, M., & Wiens, S. (2010). What You Fear Will Appear: detection of schematic spiders in spider fear. Experimental Psychology, 57(6), 470-5.
Lonsdorf, T.B., Weike, A.I., Golkar, A., Schalling, M., Hamm, A.O., & Öhman, A. (2010). Amygdala-Dependent Fear Conditioning in Humans is modulated by the BDNFval66met Polymorphism. Behavioral Neuroscience, 124(1), 9-15.
Wiens, S., Peira, N., Golkar, A., & Öhman, A. (2008). Recognizing Masked Threat: Fear Betrays, But Disgust You Can Trust. Emotion, 8(6), 810-819.
Eriksson, T., Golkar, A., Ekström, J.C., Svenningsson, P., & Ögren, S.O. (2008). 5-HT7 receptor stimulation by 8-OH-DPAT counteracts the impairing effect of 5-HT1A receptor stimulation on contextual learning in mice. European Journal of Pharmacology, 546(13), 107-110.
