Pre-Learning Stress That Is Temporally Removed from Acquisition Impairs Fear Learning.

Few studies have examined the time-dependent effects of stress on fear learning. Previously, we found that stress immediately before fear conditioning enhanced fear learning. Here, we aimed to extend these findings by assessing the effects of stress 30 min prior to fear conditioning on fear learning and fear generalization.

Childhood Maltreatment in Females Is Associated with Enhanced Fear Acquisition and an Overgeneralization of Fear.

Childhood maltreatment may alter fear neurocircuitry, which results in pathological anxiety and depression. One alteration of fear-related behaviors that has been observed in several psychiatric populations is an overgeneralization of fear. Thus, we examined the association between childhood maltreatment and fear generalization in a non-clinical sample of young adults.

Immediate pre-learning stress enhances baseline startle response and fear acquisition in a fear-potentiated startle paradigm.

Extensive work has shown that stress time-dependently influences hippocampus-dependent learning and memory. In particular, stress that is administered immediately before learning enhances long-term memory, while stress that is temporally separated from learning impairs long-term memory. We have extended these findings by examining the impact of immediate, pre-learning stress on an amygdala-dependent fear conditioning task.