The role of glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid in fear extinction: clinical implications for exposure therapy

M Davis, KM Myers - Biological psychiatry, 2002 - Elsevier
Although much is now known about the neural basis of fear acquisition, the mechanisms of
fear inhibition or suppression remain largely obscure. Fear inhibition is studied in the
laboratory through the use of an extinction procedure, in which an animal (typically a rat) is
exposed to nonreinforced presentations of a conditioned stimulus (CS; eg, a light or tone)
that had previously been paired with a fear-inducing unconditioned stimulus (US; eg, a mild
footshock). Over the course of such training, the conditioned fear response exhibited by the …