Involvement of the human cerebellum in fear-conditioned potentiation of the acoustic startle response: a PET study.
Fear-conditioned potentiation of the startle response was used to study the role of the cerebellum in associative learning of non-specific aversive reactions in healthy human subjects using PET. Prior PET scanning initially neutral light stimuli were paired with painful electric shocks (fear-conditioning phase). Four PET-scans each were performed with presentation of acoustic startle stimuli (T), fear-conditioned light stimuli (L) or acoustic stimuli paired with light (LT, potentation phase). As a measure of fear-conditioning subtraction of condition T from LT revealed an increase of regional cerebellar blood flow (rCBF) in the left cerebellar hemisphere. Subtraction of condition L from LT, as a measure of fear-conditioned potentiation, revealed an increase of rCBF in the medial cerebellum. Different parts of the cerebellum appear to be involved in this form of motor associative learning.
Frings
Markus
M
Department of Neurology, University of Essen, Hufelandstrasse 55, 45122 Essen, Germany.
Maschke
Matthias
M
Erichsen
Maren
M
Jentzen
Walter
W
Müller
Stefan P
SP
Kolb
Florian P
FP
Diener
Hans-Christoph
HC
Timmann
Dagmar
D
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013216:Reflex, Startle / Q000502:physiology*; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed