Fear Conditioning

The Little Albert Experiment was one of the most well known fear conditioning experiments. John B Watson showed that not only can humans be classically conditioned, but also furthered Pavlov’s research by show that emotions can be classically conditioned. Watson exposed a nine-month-old baby to various white stimuli such as: rats, rabbits, monkeys, etc. He observed that the child showed no fear towards the stimuli, but then whenever the child was exposed to the white stimuli followed by a loud noise it made the baby afraid and made him cry. After some time, the baby became afraid of any white stimuli and instantly began to cry because he associated it with a loud noise. Although we know now that fear can be conditioned to humans, researchers
There has been a growing number of research where people study how classical conditioning can help cure certain mental health issues or even help get rid of them, but there’s not a lot of research on how fear conditioning can help do these things as well. In the journal article “An overview of translationally informed treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder: Animal models of Pavlovian fear conditioning to human clinical trials” the authors Mallory Bowers and Kerry Ressler decided to explore the idea of a device-based treatment in combination with fear conditioning to determine whether it was an effective treatment for PTSD. They reveal “We have examined the evidence regarding efficacy of some specific treatment strategies for PTSD informed by rodent preclinical studies. We have focused on Pavlovian fear conditioning and extinction experiments in animals, which allow researchers to model aversive learning processes that may underlie development of PTSD in response to trauma, as well as extinction of pathological fear via exposure therapy, (25). Even though these device-based treatments are still being tested, the author suggests that fear conditioning paired with other administrations can possibly lead blocking of fear acquisition which in turn can possibly help people have PTSD. More research has been done in this topic as well. In the journal article “Genetics of PTSD: Conditioning as a Model for Future Research” the authors Ananda Amstadter, Nicole Nugent and Karestan Koenen explore ways that fear conditioning can help buffer the fear memories that patients have and in turn help change them. They convey “Noradrenergic hyperactivity in the basolateral amygdala is hypothesized to mediate the overconsolidation of fear memory in PTSD. The hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis regulates the