Brain activity associated with omission of an aversive event reveals the effects of fear learning and generalization.

ABSTRACT: During fear learning, anticipation of an impending aversive stimulus increases defensive behaviors. Interestingly, omission of the aversive stimulus often produces another response around the time the event was expected. This omission response suggests that the subject detected a mismatch between what was predicted and what actually occurred, thereby providing an indirect measure of cognitive expectancy. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate whether omission-related brain activity reflects fear expectancy during learning and generalization of conditioned fear. During conditioning, a face expressing a moderate amount of fear (conditioned stimulus, CS+) signaled delivery of an aversive shock unconditioned stimulus (US), whereas the same face with a neutral expres

SUBMITTER: Dunsmoor JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3319840 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature