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Updated: Jul 2, 2026

Extinction Training During the Reconsolidation Window Prevents Recovery of Fear
Published on: August 24, 2012
Attentional, associative, and configural mechanisms in extinction
José A Larrauri1, Néstor A Schmajuk
1Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Abstract:
The participation of attentional and associative mechanisms in extinction, spontaneous recovery, external disinhibition, renewal, reinstatement, and reacquisition was evaluated through computer simulations with an extant computational model of classical conditioning (N. A. Schmajuk, Y. Lam, & J. A. Gray, 1996; N. A. Schmajuk & J. A. Larrauri, 2006). The model assumes that attention to stimuli (controlled by environmental novelty) and associations between stimuli interact during memory storage (learning) and retrieval (performance). Computer simulations indicated that a combination of attentional and associative mechanisms might be sufficient to describe most of the properties of extinction. However, configural mechanisms seem necessary to describe the properties of cues that precede the target stimulus during extinction (extinction cues) and might improve the description of some experimental results regarding the associative properties of the extinction context. These configural mechanisms can be easily integrated into the present version of the model.
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