Investigations of fear conditioning in rodents and humans have illuminated the neural mechanisms of fear acquisition and extinction. However, the neural mechanism of memory consolidation of fear conditioning is not well understood. To address this question, we measured brain activity and the changes in functional connectivity following fear acquisition using resting-state functional magnetic re...

In auditory fear conditioning, experimental subjects learn to associate an auditory conditioned stimulus (CS) with an aversive unconditioned stimulus. With sufficient training, animals fear conditioned to an auditory CS show fear response to the CS, but not to irrelevant auditory stimuli. Although long-term potentiation (LTP) in the lateral amygdala (LA) plays an essential role in auditory fear...

Research across species highlights the critical role of the amygdala in fear conditioning. However, fear conditioning, involving direct aversive experience, is only one means by which fears can be acquired. Exploiting aversive experiences of other individuals through social fear learning is less risky. Behavioral research provides important insights into the workings of social fear learning, an...

The purpose of this study was to analyze fear extinction and reinstatement in humans using fear-potentiated startle. Participants were fear conditioned using a simple discrimination procedure with colored lights as the conditioned stimuli (CSs) and an airblast to the throat as the unconditioned stimulus (US). Participants were extinguished 24 h after fear conditioning. Upon presentation of unsi...

The fear appeal literature is examined in a comprehensive synthesis using meta-analytical techniques. The meta-analysis suggests that strong fear appeals produce high levels of perceived severity and susceptibility, and are more persuasive than low or weak fear appeals. The results also indicate that fear appeals motivate adaptive danger control actions such as message acceptance and maladaptiv...

Rac1, a member of the Rho family of small GTPases, is crucial for morphological changes of the mature neuronal synapse including spine formation and activity-dependent spine enlargement, while its role in the formation of associated memories, such as conditioned fear memory, is not clear. Here, we report that selective deletion of Rac1 in excitatory neurons, but not in parvalbumin inhibitory ne...