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This type of learning represents the many similar situations in humans in which initially neutral stimuli become threatening through pairing with other stimuli and generate fear, a human emotion that guides much of our behavior and is crucial for survival.
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In animal models, fear learning is usually studied by classical (Pavlovian) or instrumental association between the environment or changes in the environment (conditioned stimulus, CS) and a fearsome stimulus (usually one or more footshocks unconditioned stimulus, US). The extinction of fear learning involves to an extent a reversal of the flow of information in the mentioned structures and is used in the therapy of posttraumatic stress disorder and fear memories in general. The effect of a very large number of drugs on fear learning has been intensively studied, often as a prelude to the investigation of effects on anxiety. These studies have capitalized on in vitro observations on long-term potentiation and other kinds of plasticity. Fear learning models, notably inhibitory avoidance, have also been very useful for the analysis of the biochemical mechanisms of memory consolidation as a whole. The circuitry involves, in addition, the pre- and infralimbic ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the central amygdala subnuclei, and the dentate gyrus. Fear memory is formed in the hippocampus (contextual conditioning and inhibitory avoidance), in the basolateral amygdala (inhibitory avoidance), and in the lateral amygdala (conditioning to a tone). It was thoroughly investigated in the past 60 years mostly using two classical conditioning procedures (contextual fear conditioning and fear conditioning to a tone) and one instrumental procedure (one-trial inhibitory avoidance).
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Fear memory is the best-studied form of memory.