Neural mechanisms of context generalization (A02)

• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 316803389

The project investigates how fear learning and extinction change the neural representations of cues and contexts. We will test whether multiple consecutive contingency changes induce multiple interacting fear and extinction memory traces whose reactivation is governed by the specificity or generalization of context representations. A precision neuroimaging study at 7T will assess these effects along multiple sessions and investigate the interaction between top-down effects of prefrontal context representations and bottom-up information flow of sensory (cue) representations, while a parallel intracranial EEG study assesses the role of amygdala and hippocampal theta oscillations for representational transformations.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1280: Extinction Learning
• Applicant Institution: Ruhr-Universität Bochum
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Nikolai Axmacher