ArticleNature neuroscience2015
The neuronal basis of fear generalization in humans.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 71 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
71 citing papers in PubMed.
- REM sleep reduction leads to fear overgeneralization via negatively modulating prefrontal theta oscillations.BMC medicine · 2025Trial
- Acute stress leaves fear generalization in healthy individuals intact.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2021Trial
- Intranasal oxytocin decreases fear generalization in males, but does not modulate discrimination threshold.Psychopharmacology · 2021Trial
- Theranostic markers for personalized therapy of spider phobia: Methods of a bicentric external cross-validation machine learning approach.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2020Trial
- Modification of Fear Memory by Pharmacological and Behavioural Interventions during Reconsolidation.PloS one · 2016Trial
- Neural mechanisms of fear memory precision and generalization: from auditory cortex to amygdala.Translational psychiatry · 2026Review
- Increased generalisation in trait anxiety is driven by aversive value transfer.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Bidirectional cross-modal fear generalization: semantic similarity in representation space as a foundational mechanism.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Lions and tigers and AI, oh my: an ethical framework for human-AI interaction based on the five freedoms of animal welfare.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2026Article
- Fear Generalization in Adolescent Anxiety Disorders: A MEG Study.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- The allostatic triage model of psychopathology (ATP Model): How reallocation of brain energetic resources under stress elicits psychiatric symptoms.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Review
- Psychometric Considerations in Assessing Fear Generalization as a Predictor of Anxiety.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2025Article
- Neurobehavioral mechanisms of fear and anxiety in multiple sclerosis.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Blockade of Dopamine D3 Receptors in the Ventral Tegmental Area Mitigates Fear Memory Generalization.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- A visual generalization gradient of conceptual stimuli based on fear acquisition in visual and auditory modalities.NPJ science of learning · 2025Article
- Prefrontal correlates of fear generalization during endocannabinoid depletion.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2025Article
- Generalized expectancy of threat in threatening compared to safe contexts.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- The modulatory effect of evaluative valence on fear generalization in social anxiety: an SSVEP study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Investigating the effect of continuous and partial reinforcement in conceptual fear generalization.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Overgeneralization of autonomic defensive reactions in obesity.Scientific reports · 2024Article
11 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Organisms tend to respond similarly to stimuli that are perceptually close to an event that predicts adversity, a phenomenon known as fear generalization. Greater dissimilarity yields weaker behavioral responses, forming a fear-tuning profile. The perceptual model of fear generalization assumes that behavioral fear tuning results from perceptual similarities, suggesting that brain responses should also exhibit the same fear-tuning profile. Using fMRI and a circular fear-generalization procedure, we tested this prediction. In contrast with the perceptual model, insula responses showed less generalization than behavioral responses and encoded the aversive quality of the conditioned stimulus, as shown by high pattern similarity between the conditioned stimulus and the shock. Also inconsistent with the perceptual model, object-sensitive visual areas responded to ambiguity-related outcome uncertainty. Together these results indicate that fear generalization is not passively driven by perception, but is an active process integrating threat identification and ambiguity-based uncertainty to orchestrate a flexible, adaptive fear response.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.