Pavlovian fear conditioning is a widely used behavioral paradigm for studying associative learning in rodents. Despite early recognition that subjects may engage in a variety of both conditioned and unconditioned responses, the last several decades have seen the field narrow its focus to measure freezing as the sole indicator of conditioned fear.…

A reminder can render consolidated memory labile and susceptible to amnesic agents during a reconsolidation window. For the case of threat memory (also termed fear memory), it has been suggested that extinction training during this reconsolidation window has the same disruptive impact. This procedure could provide a powerful therapeutic principle…

Most experimental preparations demonstrate a role for dorsolateral striatum (DLS) in stimulus-response, but not outcome-based, learning. Here, we assessed DLS involvement in a touchscreen-based reversal task requiring mice to update choice following a change in stimulus-reward contingencies. In vivo single-unit recordings in the DLS showed…

While results from many past studies have implicated the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) in mediating the expression of sustained negative affect, recent studies have highlighted a more complex role for BNST that includes aspects of fear learning in addition to defensive responding. As BNST is thought to encode ambiguous or…

We present evidence that experience and cholinergic modulation in an early sensory network interact to improve certainty about olfactory stimuli. The data we present are in agreement with existing theoretical ideas about the functional role of acetylcholine but highlight the importance of early sensory networks in addition to cortical networks. We…

The immediate extinction deficit describes a higher return of fear when extinction takes place immediately after fear acquisition compared to a delayed extinction design. One explanation for this phenomenon encompasses the remaining emotional arousal evoked by fear acquisition to be still present during immediate, but not delayed extinction. In…

Fear-relevant stimuli such as snakes and spiders are thought to capture attention due to evolutionary significance. Classical conditioning experiments indicate that these stimuli accelerate learning, while instructed extinction experiments suggest they may be less responsive to instructions. We manipulated stimulus type during instructed aversive…

Fear conditioning studies in rodents allow us to assess vulnerability factors which might underlie fear-based psychopathology such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Despite PTSD being more prevalent in females than males, very few fear conditioning studies in rodents have tested females. Our study assessed fear conditioning and extinction…

Fear, which can be expressed innately or after conditioning, is triggered when a danger or a stimulus predicting immediate danger is perceived. Its role is to prepare the body to face this danger. However, dysfunction in fear processing can lead to psychiatric disorders in which fear outweighs the danger or possibility of harm. Although recognized…

One experiment with rats explored whether an extinction-cue prevents the recovery of extinguished lever-pressing responses. Initially, rats were trained to perform one instrumental response (R1) for food in Context A, and a different instrumental response (R2) in Context B. Then, responses were extinguished each in the alternate context (R1 in…

Studies on the behavioral mechanisms underlying contextual fear conditioning (CFC) have demonstrated the importance of preshock context exposure in the formation of aversive context memories. However, there has been comparatively little investigation of the effects of context exposure immediately after the shock. Some models predict that…

This series of experiments used rats to compare counterconditioning and extinction of conditioned fear responses (freezing) with respect to the effects of a context shift. In each experiment, a stimulus was paired with shock in context A, extinguished or counterconditioned through pairings with sucrose in context B, and then tested for renewal…

Clinical and preclinical studies that have examined the neurobiology of persistent fear memory in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have focused on the medial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala. Sensory systems, the periaqueductal gray (PAG), and midline thalamic nuclei have been implicated in fear and extinction memory, but whether…

Surviving threats in the environment requires brain circuits for detecting (or anticipating) danger and for coordinating appropriate defensive responses (e.g., increased cardiac output, stress hormone release, and freezing behavior). The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is a critical interface between the "affective…

Animal studies suggest that time delay between acquisition and retrieval of contextual anxiety increases generalization. Moreover, such generalization is prevented by preexposure to the context (CTX), presumably due to an improved representation of such context. We investigated whether preexposure and time-passing modulate generalization of…