ArticleeLife2026
Human cerebellum and ventral tegmental area interact during extinction of learned fear.
Article in eLife, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cerebellar Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation in the Theta Band Prevents Recall of the Initial Fear Association After Extinction Training.Human brain mapping · 2026Trial
- Dopamine D2/3 receptors and functional connectivity during fear extinction: A PET-fMRI study.Neuroimage. Reports · 2026Article
- Evidence for lateralization of fear emotions in the cerebellum.Journal of neurology · 2025Article
- Dopaminergic drugs modulate fear extinction-related processes in humans, but effects are mild.Brain communications · 2025Article
- Purkinje cell activity changes in cerebellar subregions during fear conditioning.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The key elements for fear extinction learning are unexpected omissions of expected aversive events, which are considered to be rewarding. Given its reception of reward information, we tested the hypothesis that the cerebellum contributes to reward-like prediction error processing driving extinction learning via its connections with the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Forty-three young and healthy participants performed a three-day fear conditioning paradigm in a 7T MR scanner. The cerebellum and VTA were active during unexpected omissions of aversive unconditioned stimuli in the initial extinction trials and in other learning phases, in line with the proposed role of prediction-error processing. Increased functional connectivity was observed between the cerebellum and VTA, indicating that they are functionally coupled during fear extinction learning. These results suggest that an interaction between the cerebellum and VTA should be incorporated into the existing model of the fear extinction network.
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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.