Fig. 2.

Neural pathways underlying fear conditioning. Fear conditioning is a procedure in which an emotionally neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) is presented in association with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US). In studies of rats, the CS has typically been an auditory tone and the US an electric footshock. The pathways mediating auditory fear conditioning in rats involve the convergence of the CS and US pathways onto single cells in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA) from thalamic and cortical processing regions in the sensory systems that process the CS (auditory system) and US (somatosensory system). The LA then connects with the CE both directly and by way of other amygdala regions (not shown). Outputs of the CE then control the expression of fear responses, including freezing behavior and related autonomic nervous system (e.g., blood pressure and heart rate) and endocrine (pituitary–adrenal hormones) responses. Lesion and imaging studies, described in the text, have confirmed that the human amygdala is also involved in fear conditioning, but the involvement of subregions of the amygdala is still poorly understood in humans. CG, central gray; LH, lateral hypothalamus; PVN, paraventricular hypothalamus. From Medina et al. (2002). (Phelps and LeDoux, 2005)