Figure 3 shows the US-expectancy data over the course of fear acquisition for both CSs separately.
As a variant of the Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm the conditional discrimination design allows for a detailed investigation of fear acquisition and fear inhibition.
Figure 1 shows the sample distributions for freezing after fear acquisition and fear extinction for males and females from different animal suppliers.
The offspring means for tone-conditioned freezing after fear acquisition were 77%% (SD = 26%%) for the LE line, 74%% (SD = 22%%) for the RB line, and 65%% (SD = 27%%) for the HE line.
The distribution for tone-conditioned freezing after fear acquisition showed highly negative skew, with the mass of the distribution concentrated toward maximum freezing for both males and females.
It is well established that the LA is an early site of convergent sensory information processing that is essential for fear memory acquisition and expression (LeDoux, 2000); however, fear coding and plasticity are broadly distributed across multiple brain regions including the thalamus, cortex (sensory and prefrontal), and hippocampus (Tovote et al., 2015).
Classical fear acquisition and extinction are important models for the etiology and treatment of anxiety disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Measuring fear-potentiated startle responses, we investigated the influence of two genetic polymorphisms (5-HTTLPR and COMT Val158Met) on fear acquisition and fear inhibition which are considered to be critical mechanisms for the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders.
Mice were then tested, with no additional drug treatment, for cue-conditioned fear in the previously habituated context on the two days following fear acquisition.
Fear acquisition, extinction and return of fear paradigms serve as experimental learning models for the development, treatment and relapse of anxiety.
