This study investigated outcome-selective Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) in fight-or-flight decision making. Participants learned to attack or retreat from monsters (instrumental phase) and to associate environments with specific monsters without responding (Pavlovian phase). In the transfer phase, they chose responses to unseen monsters…

This study investigates crossmodal fear generalization, testing whether conditioned fear spreads between different sensory modalities. Participants in the unimodal group were presented with visual stimuli--images of a sparrow (CS+) and a laptop (CS-)--while the crossmodal group received auditory stimuli--sparrow calls (CS+) and keyboard typing…

Using spatial mapping processes to discriminate between threat and safety is crucial for survival. Little is known why some fail to discriminate during contextual conditioning. We used a virtual reality (VR) contextual conditioning paradigm to elucidate the effects of state and trait anxiety on contextual threat learning. Participants (n = 70)…

The neuronal systems that promote protective defensive behaviours have been studied extensively using Pavlovian conditioning. In this paradigm, an initially neutral-conditioned stimulus is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus leading the subjects to display behavioural signs of fear. Decades of research into the neural bases of this…