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In fear conditioning, the main circuits that are involved are the sensory areas that process the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, certain regions of the amygdala that undergo plasticity (or long-term potentiation) during learning, and the regions that bear an effect on the expression of specific conditioned responses.
Pavlovian fear conditioning is a behavioral paradigm in which organisms learn to predict aversive events. [1] It is a form of learning in which an aversive stimulus (e.g. an electrical shock) is associated with a particular neutral context (e.g., a room) or neutral stimulus (e.g., a tone), resulting in the expression of fear responses to the originally neutral stimulus or context.
Fear is a conscious experience and occurs the same way as any other kind of conscious experience: via cortical circuits that allow attention to certain forms of brain activity. He argues the only differences between an emotional and non-emotion state of consciousness are the underlying neural ingredients that contribute to the state. [ 16 ]
In this process, the conditioned fear responses diminish progressively over time, when the previously conditioned stimulus is presented without being paired with the unconditioned stimulus. [20] To understand the brain changes during this, a task-functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) can be performed.
For the areas in the brain involved in emotion - most specifically, fear - the processing and response to emotional stimuli can be altered when there are damage to any of these regions. Damage to the cortical areas involved in the limbic system, such as the cingulate cortex or frontal lobes, has resulted in extreme emotion changes. [ 28 ]
Fear is an unpleasant emotion that arises in response to perceived dangers or threats. Fear causes physiological and psychological changes. It may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat, commonly known as the fight-or-flight response. Extreme cases of fear can trigger an immobilized freeze ...
The brain is made up of two halves. Every half's amygdala is made up of a small, round structures located closer to the forehead than ( anterior to) the hippocampus , near the temporal lobes . The amygdalae are involved in detecting and learning which parts of our surroundings are important and have emotional significance.
This slow process, referred to as consolidation, allows emotions to influence the way the memory is stored. [7] The amygdala is involved in memory consolidation, which is the process of transferring information that is currently in working memory into ones long-term memory. This process is also known as memory modulation. [7]