Figure 3. Neural reinstatement of the prior mental context increased during aversive moments in the first half of fear conditioning, and this pattern was related to greater retroactive memory benefits for items from the CS+ category.

(a) A multivoxel pattern classifier was trained on the localizer data to discriminate scene versus scrambled images in the left and right parahippocampal place area (PPA; top left green box). Green circles represent study-specific probabilistic left and right PPA masks across all participants. The scene classifier was then tested on fMRI data from the conditioning phase of the experiment (Phase 2; top right gold box). Because scenes were only presented during Phase 1 of the incidental encoding task, any scene evidence output by the classifier during the CS+ and CS− images during conditioning was interpreted as reinstatement of the prior mental context (blue thought bubbles). (b) Scene evidence output by the pattern classifier was greater for aversive items (CS+) compared to neutral (CS−) items during the first versus second half of conditioning. Colored boxplots represent 25th–75th percentiles of the data, the center line the median, and the error bars the s.e.m. Overlaid dots represent individual participants. (c) A partial linear correlation analysis revealed that aversive-learning induced retroactive memory effect (RME) was correlated with greater scene evidence on CS+ trials from the first half of conditioning. Lightning bolt indicates shock. *p < .05.