In obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), functional behaviors such as checking that a door is locked become dysfunctional, maladaptive, and debilitating. However, it is currently unknown how aversive and appetitive motivations interact to produce functional and dysfunctional behavior in OCD. Here we show a double dissociation in the effects of…

Stimuli encoded shortly before an aversive event are typically well remembered. Traditionally, this emotional memory enhancement has been attributed to beneficial effects of physiological arousal on memory formation. Here, we proposed an additional mechanism and tested whether memory formation is driven by the unpredictable nature of aversive…

People seem to differ in their conditionability, that is, the ease by which fear associations (neutral stimulus-unconditioned stimulus [CS-US] contingencies) are learned. Recently, the level of trait worry has been proposed as a predictor of heightened conditionability. The current research aimed to (a) further investigate this influence of…

Synaptically released Zn[superscript 2+] is a potential modulator of neurotransmission and synaptic plasticity in fear-conditioning pathways. Zinc transporter 3 (ZnT3) knock-out (KO) mice are well suited to test the role of zinc in learned fear, because ZnT3 is colocalized with synaptic zinc, responsible for its transport to synaptic vesicles,…

It is well known that emotions participate in the regulation of social behaviors and that the emotion displayed by a conspecific influences the behavior of other animals. In its simplest form, empathy can be characterized as the capacity to be affected by and/or share the emotional state of another. However, to date, relatively little is known…

Humans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are deficient at extinguishing conditioned fear responses. A study of identical twins concluded that this extinction deficit does not predate trauma but develops as a result of trauma. The present study tested whether the Lewis rat model of PTSD reproduces these features of the human syndrome.…

The Src protein tyrosine kinase plays a central role in the regulation of N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) activity by regulating NMDAR subunit 2B (NR2B) surface expression. In the amygdala, NMDA-dependent synaptic plasticity resulting from convergent somatosensory and auditory inputs contributes to emotional memory; however, the role of Src…

The present study investigated reinstatement of conditioned responses in humans by using a differential Pavlovian conditioning procedure. Evidence for reinstatement was established in a direct (fear rating) and in an indirect measure (secondary reaction time task) of conditioning. Moreover, the amount of reinstatement in the secondary reaction…

Classical fear conditioning requires the recognition of conditioned stimuli (CS) and the association of the CS with an aversive stimulus. We used Affymetrix oligonucleotide microarrays to characterize changes in gene expression compared to naive mice in both the amygdala and the hippocampus 30 min after classical fear conditioning and 30 min after…