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Updated: May 19, 2026

Whisker-signaled Eyeblink Classical Conditioning in Head-fixed Mice
Published on: March 30, 2016
Additional support for the existence of skin conductance responses at unconditioned stimulus omission
Victor I Spoormaker1, Jens Blechert, Roberto Goya-Maldonado
1Neuroimaging Research Group, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany. spoormaker@mpipsykl.mpg.de
Abstract:
The existence of a skin conductance response to an expected but omitted aversive stimulus has recently been challenged. To counter this claim, we provide a review of the literature and a temporal analysis of two independent skin conductance data sets during aversive conditioning and extinction that demonstrates a consistent and reproducible skin conductance response at omission of an anticipated aversive stimulus. The validity of this so-called unconditioned stimulus (US) omission response is relevant for skin conductance modeling in the context of neuroimaging and more generally for conditioning theory.
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