Fear conditioning constitutes the best and most reproducible paradigm to study the neurobiological mechanisms underlying emotions. On the other hand, studies on the synaptic plasticity phenomena underlying fear conditioning present neural circuits enforcing this learning pattern related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Notably, in both humans and the rodent model, fear conditioning and context rely on dependent neurocircuitry in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, cingulate gyrus, and hippocampus. In this review, an overview of the role that classical neurotransmitters play in the contextual conditioning model of fear, and therefore in PTSD, was reported.
Keywords: amygdala; contextual fear conditioning; hippocampus; learning; neurotransmission; post-traumatic stress disorders; prefrontal cortex.