Fear is maladaptive when it persists long after circumstances have become safe. It is
therefore crucial to develop an approach that persistently prevents the return of fear.
Pavlovian fear-conditioning paradigms are commonly employed to create a controlled, novel
fear association in the laboratory. After pairing an innocuous stimulus (conditioned stimulus,
CS) with an aversive outcome (unconditioned stimulus, US) we can elicit a fear response
(conditioned response, or CR) by presenting just the stimulus alone1, 2. Once fear is …