This article reviews the behavioral neuroscience of extinction, the phenomenon in which a
behavior that has been acquired through Pavlovian or instrumental (operant) learning …

Sensory preconditioned and second-order conditioned responding are each well-
documented. The former occurs in subjects (typically rats) exposed to pairings of two …

Avoiding stimuli that were previously associated with threat is essential for adaptive
functioning, but excessive avoidance that persists in the absence of threat can turn …

Simple Summary Threat conditioning is a process by which animals learn about danger. As
such, this process has been extensively studied as a model of how humans develop fears …

Conditioned inhibition is a Pavlovian learning phenomenon in which a stimulus that predicts
the absence of an otherwise expected outcome comes to control an organism's responding …

Associative learning is often considered to require the physical presence of stimuli in the
environment in order for them to be linked. This, however, is not a necessary condition for …

The field of associative learning theory was forever changed by the contributions of Robert
A. Rescorla. He created an organizational structure that gave us a framework for thinking …

Higher-order conditioning involves learning causal links between multiple events, which
then allows one to make novel inferences. For example, observing a correlation between …

Consolidation of newly formed fear memories requires a series of molecular events within
the basolateral complex of the amygdala (BLA). Once consolidated, new information can be …

This series of experiments used rats to compare counterconditioning and extinction of
conditioned fear responses (freezing) with respect to the effects of a context shift. In each …