RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Fear Conditioning following Unilateral Temporal Lobectomy: Dissociation of Conditioned Startle Potentiation and Autonomic Learning
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 11117
OP 11124
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2032-05.2005
VO 25
IS 48
A1 Almut I. Weike
A1 Alfons O. Hamm
A1 Harald T. Schupp
A1 Uwe Runge
A1 Henry W. S. Schroeder
A1 Christof Kessler
YR 2005
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/48/11117.abstract
AB The present study investigated fear-potentiated startle and autonomic learning in brain-lesioned patients in a classical fear-conditioning paradigm. Startle blink and skin conductance responses of 30 patients who underwent unilateral temporal lobectomy because of drug-resistant epilepsy were compared with those of 32 healthy controls. As expected, temporal lobectomy patients showed a general impairment in fear conditioning relative to controls. This impairment did not differ with respect to the affected hemisphere. Moreover, while fear-conditioned startle potentiation in healthy controls was independent of contingency awareness, skin conductance discrimination was only observed for those participants who correctly recognized the stimulus contingencies. Patients who acquired a declarative memory of the contingencies also showed intact skin conductance discrimination but failed to exhibit fear-potentiated startle. The present findings support a two-levels-of-learning account of human fear conditioning and also demonstrate that the amygdala is crucially involved in fear learning.