Abstracts: International Society for Developmental Psychobiology, 36th annual meeting

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 359 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0012-1630
• DOI: 10.1002/dev.10137

✦ Synopsis

An astonishing level of detail is known about the circuits that mediate the acquisition of Pavlovian conditional fear. Considerable attention has been focused on the amygdala, and to be sure, amygdala activity is normally essential for fear conditioning. However, the complete circuit involves frontal cortex, hippocampus, periaqueductal gray and rostral ventral medulla. Activity within all of these regions during training plays a role in the acquisition of fear. Indeed, under certain conditions of overtraining fear can be acquired in the absence of the amygdala.