Psychology Commons^™

Neural Correlates And Neuroanatomy Of Juvenile And Adult Contextual Fear Memory Retention, Natalie Odynocki

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

AbstractFear is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism that allows an organism to discern potential harm and act accordingly by engaging in defensive behaviors. While fear is an adaptive response, dysregulation of fear by means of a traumatic event can lead to psychiatric conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Animal research using rodents in Pavlovian context fear conditioning experiments allows for the ability to study the underlying neural circuitry of threat-appropriate and aberrant fear learning and memory that may contribute to PTSD. However, despite reports that women are more than two times more likely to develop PTSD compared to men, the …