Fear conditioning is a learning process in which a previously neutral cue acquires threat value through association with an aversive event.[1][2] It is a core experimental framework for understanding amygdala-dependent threat learning, extinction, and maladaptive stress memory.
Fear-conditioning circuitry is directly relevant to pages on the central amygdala, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and trauma-related symptoms.[1:1][2:1] It also provides a mechanistic bridge between circuit neuroscience and neuropsychiatric symptoms that appear in some neurodegenerative disorders.
Emotional circuits in the brain. Neuron (2000). ↩︎ ↩︎
Fear conditioning selectively disrupts noradrenergic facilitation of GABAergic inhibition in the basolateral amygdala. Neuropharmacology (2017). ↩︎ ↩︎