ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2017
Behavioral pattern separation and its link to the neural mechanisms of fear generalization.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 109 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mnemonic Discrimination Performance in Anxiety and Depression: A Systematic Review.Depression and anxiety · 2026Pooled it
- The human hippocampus can pattern separate memories by meaning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The ventral/anterior hippocampus as a central hub for stress-related dopaminergic circuit dysfunction in psychiatric disorders.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Review
- Context Memory Discrimination and Recognition in Humans: Development of a Novel Cognitive Task.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Effects of novelty and reward-based fear extinction on memory generalization.Behaviour research and therapy · 2026Article
- Functional loss of PKMζ in the dorsal hippocampus potentiates the time-dependent increase in false contextual fear memory and impairs spatial recognition memory in mice.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Psychometric Considerations in Assessing Fear Generalization as a Predictor of Anxiety.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2025Article
- Impaired mnemonic pattern separation associated with PTSD symptoms paradoxically improves with regular cannabis use.Npj mental health research · 2025Article
- Consistency of perceptual response variability in size estimation and reproduction tasks.Behavior research methods · 2025Article
- Pharmacological Enhancement of Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis Improves Behavioral Pattern Separation in Young and Aged Male Mice.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2025Article
- Event Segmentation Promotes the Reorganization of Emotional Memory.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- The representational instability in the generalization of fear learning.NPJ science of learning · 2024Article
- Investigating the effect of continuous and partial reinforcement in conceptual fear generalization.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Study protocol TransTAM: Transdiagnostic research into emotional disorders and cognitive-behavioral therapy of the adaptive mind.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Neurobiology and systems biology of stress resilience.Physiological reviews · 2024Review
- Septohippocampal cholinergic system at the intersection of stress and cognition: Current trends and translational implications.The European journal of neuroscience · 2024Review
- Beneficial effects of mindfulness-based intervention on hippocampal volumes and episodic memory for childhood adversity survivors.Journal of affective disorders reports · 2024Article
- Retinoic acid modulation of granule cell activity and spatial discrimination in the adult hippocampus.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2024Article
- Adult Neurogenesis, Context Encoding, and Pattern Separation: A Pathway for Treating Overgeneralization.Advances in neurobiology · 2024Review
- Exercise and Memory.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fear generalization is a prominent feature of anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is defined as enhanced fear responding to a stimulus that bears similarities, but is not identical to a threatening stimulus. Pattern separation, a hippocampal-dependent process, is critical for stimulus discrimination; it transforms similar experiences or events into non-overlapping representations. This study is the first in humans to investigate the extent to which fear generalization relies on behavioral pattern separation abilities. Participants (N = 46) completed a behavioral task taxing pattern separation, and a neuroimaging fear conditioning and generalization paradigm. Results show an association between lower behavioral pattern separation performance and increased generalization in shock expectancy scores, but not in fear ratings. Furthermore, lower behavioral pattern separation was associated with diminished recruitment of the subcallosal cortex during presentation of generalization stimuli. This region showed functional connectivity with the orbitofrontal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Together, the data provide novel experimental evidence that pattern separation is related to generalization of threat expectancies, and reduced fear inhibition processes in frontal regions. Deficient pattern separation may be critical in overgeneralization and therefore may contribute to the pathophysiology of anxiety disorders and PTSD.
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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.