ArticleFrontiers in neuroscience2020
An Evolutionarily Threat-Relevant Odor Strengthens Human Fear Memory.
Article in Frontiers in neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Midbrain PAG Astrocytes Modulate Mouse Defensive and Panic-Like Behaviors.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- OWSum: algorithmic odor prediction and insight into structure-odor relationships.Journal of cheminformatics · 2023Article
- Reduced contextually induced muscle thermogenesis in rats with calorie restriction and lower aerobic fitness but not monogenic obesity.Temperature (Austin, Tex.) · 2023Article
- Translational relevance of behavioral, neural, and electroencephalographic profiles in a mouse model of post-traumatic stress disorder.Neurobiology of stress · 2021Article
- Olfactory impairment in men and mice related to aging and amyloid-induced pathology.Pflugers Archiv : European journal of physiology · 2021Review
- Pathogens, odors, and disgust in rodents.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Olfaction is an evolutionary ancient sense, but it remains unclear to what extent it can influence routine human behavior. We examined whether a threat-relevant predator odor (2-methyl-2-thiazoline) would contextually enhance the formation of human fear memory associations. Participants who learned to associate visual stimuli with electric shock in this predator odor context later showed stronger fear responses to the visual stimuli than participants who learned in an aversiveness-matched control odor context. This effect generalized to testing in another odor context, even after extinction training. Results of a separate experiment indicate that a possible biological mechanism for this effect may be increased cortisol levels in a predator odor context. These results suggest that innate olfactory processes can play an important role in human fear learning. Modulatory influences of odor contexts may partly explain the sometimes maladaptive persistence of human fear memory, e.g., in post-traumatic stress disorders.
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Registered trials
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