Learning Not to Fear, Faster

Learning not to fear, faster.

Overcoming our fears is on everyone’s “to do” list. However, this is more difficult for some than others, especially those suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To understand how the brain learns to feel safe, researchers have turned to extinction of classically conditioned fear. In extinction, mice learn that a tone previously paired with a footshock no longer predicts the shock...

The amygdala modulates memory consolidation of fear-motivated inhibitory avoidance learning but not classical fear conditioning.

Although the lateral and basal nuclei of the amygdala are believed to be essential for the acquisition of Pavlovian fear conditioning, studies using post-training manipulations of the amygdala in the inhibitory avoidance learning paradigm have recently called this view into question. We used the GABA(A) agonist muscimol to functionally inactivate these nuclei immediately after single-trial Pavl...

Fear of Not Flying

IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND there was a curious gap between the study and practice of law. From the thirteenth century to the seventeenth, the main language used for pleading in common law courts was Law French. It seems to have developed because Latin, the language of formal records, carried too much historical freight from Roman law for the peculiarities of English circumstances, whereas medieval Eng...

AIDS: sense not fear.

To Fear or Not to Fear: The role of the amygdala & prefrontal cortex in the regulation of fear