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.
Odor conditioning induces two changes in olfactory neurons: non-associative sensory adaptation to odor history, and associative, bidirectional changes in behavioral output that are oppositely regulated in aversive and appetitive learning.
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.
Perceived imminence of threat and resulting intensity of defensive responses during serial compound stimulus conditioning are determined by auditory stimulus salience, not cue sequence as recently reported.
Neurons in the lateral habenula are activated by pain, bitterness and social defeat, and their responses are dynamically shaped by learning, suggesting a role in experience-dependent selection of behavioral actions to stressors.
Activating ASIC channels in the amygdala makes a single reminder more effective at rendering consolidated fear memories labile and susceptible to modification.
While the striatum and orbitofrontal cortex learn about threats through verbal warnings, the amygdala learns only from direct experience, suggesting that the amygdala forms part of a specialized threat detection system.
Exclusion of participants in tasks with a learning element can introduce substantial bias and needs to be carefully considered and transparently reported and justified.
