Citation

Ernst TM, Brol AE, Gratz M, Ritter C, Bingel U, Schlamann M, Maderwald S, Quick HH, Merz CJ, Timmann D. Elife 2019; 8: e46831.

Affiliation

Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, dLife Sciences Plublications, Ltd)

DOI

10.7554/eLife.46831

PMID

31464686

Abstract

Prediction errors are thought to drive associative fear learning. Surprisingly little is known about the possible contribution of the cerebellum. To address this question, healthy participants underwent a differential fear conditioning paradigm during 7T magnetic resonance imaging. An event-related design allowed us to separate cerebellar fMRI signals related to the visual conditioned stimulus (CS) from signals related to the subsequent unconditioned stimulus (US; an aversive electric shock). We found significant activation of cerebellar lobules Crus I and VI bilaterally related to the CS+ compared to the CS-. Most importantly, significant activation of lobules Crus I and VI was also present during the unexpected omission of the US in unreinforced CS+ acquisition trials. This activation disappeared during extinction when US omission became expected. These findings provide evidence that the cerebellum has to be added to the neural network processing predictions and prediction errors in the emotional domain.

© 2019, Ernst et al.

Language: en

Keywords

aversive conditioning; cerebellar hemisphere; emotions; extinction; fear; human; neuroscience; vermis