Closing the Gap Between Unconscious and Conscious EmotionDr. LeDoux's lab is aimed at understanding the biological mechanisms of emotional memory. They are particularly interested in how the brain learns and stores information about danger. Using classical fear conditioning as a way of inducing emotional memories in rats, they have mapped the neural pathways by which sensory stimuli enter and flow through the brain in the process of fear learning. This work implicated specific circuits within the amygdala as essential for the formation of memories of the fear conditioning experience. It is now clear that the same brain system underlies fear learning in humans. The detailed mechanisms of fear, which can only be uncovered through animal studies, are thus applicable to understanding fear processing in the human brain.
