Figure 1.

The experimental design of the context-dependent differential fear conditioning procedure. VR software was used for the operationalization of external context change during the phases of fear acquisition and extinction. Context 1 featured an apartment and context 2 showed a cafeteria. Participants were instructed to freely explore the VR contexts, which rotated in simultaneous correspondence to the participants’ head movements, so that they became fully immersed in the virtual context. The order of context presentation was matched across participants and counterbalanced during fear retrieval in contexts A (ret A) and B (ret B).