A novel virtual reality-based contextual fear conditioning paradigm for head-fixed mice that elicits robust freezing behavior and enables multiphoton imaging of neural circuits underlying learning, memory, and fear.

Pronounced cerebellar activation during unexpected omission of a potentially harmful event suggests that the cerebellum has to be added to the neural network processing prediction errors underlying emotional associative learning.

A more complete, bidirectional relationship between fear conditioning and behavior is established when many behaviors are examined, as opposed to single behavior such as freezing.

When exposed to prolonged stressful stimulation, rats start to emit long, frequency-unmodulated 44-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations, usually within the 35–50 kHz range, along with, previously described, long and unmodulated 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations.

Deconditioning is a safe and efficient new approach to updating traumatic memories, in which fear memory is rewritten to a very low level in a long-lasting way.

Locus coeruleus responses to salient environmental stimuli drive increases in hippocampal dopamine that are important for long-term memory formation during trace fear conditioning.

A whole brain analysis using human neuroimaging data shows neural correlates of individual differences in conditioned fear.

Female, but not male rats exhibit an active conditioned fear response, which challenges traditional approaches to measuring fear learning exclusively through freezing, and suggests that females use a more diverse set of threat strategies.

Associative and non-associative learning mechanisms summate to produce robust and complex conditioned behavior profiles, opening new avenues to in-depth investigations of defensive responses and threat evaluation.

Exclusion of participants in tasks with a learning element can introduce substantial bias and needs to be carefully considered and transparently reported and justified.